


Into the Sunset

by intodusk



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:40:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25251013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intodusk/pseuds/intodusk
Summary: Snips and one-shots. Mostly Worm/stuff written for events on the Cauldron discord.
Relationships: Alec | Regent/Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver, Cassie | WagTheDog/Rachel Lindt | Bitch | Hellhound, Danny Hebert/Mr. Gladly, Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver/Sophia Hess | Shadow Stalker
Comments: 7
Kudos: 38
Collections: Cauldron Cup Season 5, The Cauldron Give-a-Fic-a-Thon





	1. Dinner Plans

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for a match in Cauldron Cup 4  
> Prompt: Alec // Taylor // Gender Changes AU // Loving

Duchess took a long, hard look at herself.  
  
She stood regal and proud, back straight, shoulders drawn. The white dress of her costume was draped loose over her lithe frame, cinched with a golden rope belt at the waist. She held her scepter high in one hand. The other was low, the ends of strings wrapped around her fingers. Her silken black tresses were swept over one shoulder, giving an unobstructed view of her full-face Venetian-style mask.  
  
She was also eight feet tall from head to truncated torso, two dimensional, rendered in oil paint, and hung above the chaise longue her real body was lazing in.  
  
The detailing and anatomy were superb, there was no question about that. Each fold delicately replicated, each fabric as fine to the eye as to the touch. Not one body part out of proportion or place.  
  
The problem was, the background was a medley of stained glass, and the power to back that imagery up was no longer stored away in her basement. She could swap it out for the one where she had various faceless hotties clinging to her legs, or the one with her brother dangling from a noose behind her, but she doubted the boss-man would be happy with either.  
  
“Ma’am, he's here.”  
  
She grinned behind her mask and rolled onto her other side on the chaise. She took a moment to settle into a loose, languid pose, then gestured to two of her underlings on the far end of her greeting hall.  
  
Before they'd even gotten the double doors open all the way, Skitter marched inside, all grey armor plates and tight black silk, looming larger than life, commanding attention simply by existing. His sweeping cloak was mottled with insects and his short dark curls tangled behind his mask.  
  
He looked around the hall, surveying its progress. Her end, with the portrait and the chaise on a dais, was near-finished, with decorative suits of armor by the side doors and a great crystal chandelier above. In contrast, the end he stood at was glaringly incomplete, sporting peeled paint and inconsistent tiling.  
  
Her underlings stiffened when his gaze passed over them. They were professionals, but she was better at reading their discomfort than they were at hiding it. They'd have the work finished days ahead of schedule, and he hadn't had to speak a word to make it happen. She doubted he even realized he'd done it.  
  
“Duchess.”  
  
“Your Eminence,” she drawled.  
  
“A situation has been brought to my attention. If you have time, let's take things to the conference room. If you don't have time, make time.”  
  
She groaned theatrically. “Why can't the wicked rest for, like, one day?”  
  
“‘Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it.’”  
  
“Ugh, again with the stooping. Find a new quote already.” She raised her hands and clapped twice, and each of her mooks set down whatever they'd been working on and left through the left side door.  
  
She watched until the last one closed the door behind him, then stretched like a pampered cat and rose. Her low-heeled brogues clicked down the dais, his sneakers padded quiet strides across the unfinished flooring, and in the middle, they met.  
  
“So,” she purred, undoing the clasps of his cloak, “are we grabbing grub first, or do you wanna get right to the conferencing?”  
  
His bugs took care of the rest, detaching the cape from his armor and carrying it away across the tile like a magic carpet. “Actually… I was wondering if you wanted to get out of your territory for a bit.”  
  
“Oh? Shall we stroll along Leviathan Lake? Or maybe make out beneath the Slaughterhouse statues. I hear you can still smell Luster Lad’s flesh burning.”  
  
“I had a place in mind. It’s a little beat up, but I think you might like it anyways.”  
  
She pursed her lips. They had a good thing going already, with the casual company and regular trysts. This sounded more like a capital ‘D’ date. The kind that, from what she gathered, came with implications, expectations, and, worst of all, complications. She'd never thought them worth the trouble.  
  
But, at the same time, he'd managed to surprise her before.  
  
“Fine. But I reserve the right to tear your clothes off if I get bored.”  
  
He turned to the double doors, in part to hide the blush she couldn't see. She knew it was there anyways. “I haven't said if there'd be other people around or not.”  
  
She sidled up to him, walked with him, and gave his skinny, silk-sleeved ass a smack that made him jump.  
  
“‘One must have the courage to dare,’ dork.”

~

  
The ocean stretched out into forever. Below, the last low light of day glinted on thousands of small, gentle ripples, making the otherwise murky waters shine. Above, a myriad of blues and purples and reds framed lazy white clouds that flowed like rivers to the horizon.  
  
On either side lay other Boardwalk properties, former boutiques and cafés. Many were still drooping ruins, but just as many stood refurbished or rebuilt, transformed into utilitarian housing and storage.  
  
The restaurant whose balcony they were seated on was undergoing a similar process, its décor stripped from the freshly painted walls, its floorboards replaced but not yet polished. The only original features to survive were the wrought iron tables and chairs.  
  
Taylor was seated next to her rather than across from her, looking out over the bay. His slim jeans and fitted cotton button-down- Liam’s suggestions, no doubt -suited him well, form without sacrificing function. The sleeves were rolled up to the elbow to reveal a bit of wiry muscle. He still wore the same old frames but the eyes behind them made up the difference.  
  
“What do you think?”  
  
She stopped fiddling with her spoon and brought it to her lips. The salty sea breeze seasoned the chowder, accentuated the clam and the bits of bacon. She hummed, contented. “It’s good. Real good. I'm this close to ringing up Gordon Ramsay.”  
  
“I meant this place.”  
  
She shrugged. “It’s chill, I guess. Why did you bring me here?”  
  
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “I used to come to this place a lot, as a kid. It’ll be a kind of community kitchen soon, but it used to be an oyster house. When Mom and Dad were off work and I was out of school, we’d take the ferry from the south station up to the north one over there. Then we’d walk over here and get lunch. Mom knew a lot of clam diggers and most everyone that worked local trawlers, and Dad had gone to college with the guy that ran the place, so we always got to sit here on the balcony and watch the boats go by.”  
  
She nodded, swallowing envy. “But why did you bring _me_ here?”  
  
He turned to her, a small frown dragging on his wide mouth. “Do you not want to be?”  
  
“It’s not that. It’s-” She chewed on the thought. “I get why you’re down to do the tantric tango with me. I mean, look at me. And I know I’m a blast to hang with. Duh. But this?” Her hand swept out. “This is something else. I can’t see what makes you think I’d be any good for this- this long-walk-on-the-beach sorta shit.”  
  
“I hadn’t thought you the type to paint in your spare time until I saw you doing it.”  
  
She waved him off. “Yeah, well, _dear Maman_ thought her little mistakes should at least be cultured.”  
  
“She’s not here, but you still paint.”  
  
She couldn’t argue that.  
  
“I think being with the Undersiders has taught me a lot about preconceived notions, the person under the image. So has being with you, Adeline.”  
  
Waves lapped against the repaired posts of the pier.  
  
He continued. “I made a decision recently, about how I want to do things going forward. The end of the world is hanging over our heads, and I could maybe make a fractional difference doing things another way, but I want to see things through here. I didn’t realize how much those days with my parents meant to me until they were gone. I can make sure these people get to see those days again. That you and I get to, separately… or together.” He laced his fingers with hers. “Everyone deserves the opportunity.”  
  
And there it was, the reason she’d given this thing with him a chance in the first place. He’d gone and made her feel something, the dorky bastard.  
  
She turned back to the view beyond. The sky had gone indigo and the darkened sea looked still. The clouds had disappeared into the distance, leaving only the horizon, where sky met sea. Where, if she squinted, the two might become one.  
  
Despite herself, she wondered how a landscape might look hung in her hall.  
  
She squeezed his hand. “Fuck it. Sure. Let's give it a shot.”


	2. Extinguished

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CCup 4 match  
> Prompt: Miss Militia // Burnscar // Fantasy AU // Remorse

Hana’s steed crested the hill and came to an abrupt halt. It didn't flee outright, it was too well-trained for that, but it refused to take her any further.  
  
She understood why.  
  
Miller’s Dale had been a quiet township of mild industry and milder folk. Last she'd passed through, half its structures had been family homes, all its livestock had enjoyed grassy open ranges, and its eponymous water mill had stood sturdy and stoic on its river’s bank. The sun had hardly shone on more peaceable people.  
  
The scene at the bottom of the hill was a stark and sobering contrast. Half its structures were ablaze, the other half reduced to stone and ash. All its fields were scorched down to the soil and littered with blackened corpses. Its mill’s great wooden wheel roared with flames so furious the river itself hissed with steam. Searing light cut through the dead of night and made the thick clouds overhead glow like great, looming embers.  
  
The wretched screams that had led her here to begin with had since gone silent.  
  
It was not Miller’s Dale anymore. It never would be again.  
  
Hana dismounted and tied her horse’s lead to the fence that followed along the dirt road. She understood why it hesitated, but she could not afford to empathize. Not if she was going to set things right.  
  
Her descent along the slope took minutes, of which she wasted none. First, she wrapped her shawl tight around the lower half of her face, tying it off below the base of her ponytail. It would block the worst of the smoke from her lungs and muffle the acrid stench of charred flesh. Next, she removed her riding gloves and tied them to her belt, baring her fingers to the sharp wind and the awful hints of warmth it carried. Finally, most crucially, she unbuttoned the left sleeve of her olive-green doublet and folded it back over her forearm, exposing her wrist.  
  
The simple cobblestone arch that had once welcomed visitors had collapsed. The top was gone, crumbled; its stones lined the threshold in a jagged array. The ruin expelled gusts of hot air periodically, like the heaving breaths of a great and ravenous beast.  
  
Armed with courage, discipline, and virtue, Hana marched into bedlam.  
  
The first homes she passed had been the first to burn. Stone foundations were now ash basins, furnished only with woodstoves and fallen pot racks. The skeletal supports of the wood structures stood bare, black, and brittle. The skeletons of their occupants looked much the same.  
  
Her eyes lingered on the smaller bodies. The smoke weighed on her lungs, constricted her chest.  
  
Still, she kept pace.   
  
At the center of town there was a wide open market area, where traders would never again set up stands. At the center stood a pear tree whose rich earthy bark had been seared dark. What few emerald green leaves were left fell smoldering from the branches and were ash before they reached the dirt. Past that, the rest of the buildings blazed. The mill house at the end of the road was starting to catch now, like a funeral pyre being set.  
  
Hana passed under the tree and stopped in front of it. With confidence she couldn't afford not to feel, she addressed the inferno.  
  
“Spirit!” she called. “I come to you alone. I, whose arrow pierced you at Stathford, whose blade cut you at Norwick… and whose charge you slew in Haven.” Her fingers flexed at her sides. “You are trapped between the river and myself. I give you now your last chance to die painlessly.”  
  
Her words echoed. The echos faded. No response came.  
  
“I know you are here.”  
  
The silence was broken only by the crackle and hiss of burning homes.  
  
She grit her teeth. “Time is of the essence, spirit. Your flames dwindle, and my mercy grows cold.”  
  
“ _Mercy?”_  
  
A great ball of fire hurtled out from one of countless blazes, and Hana crouched before she could think. She gripped her bare left wrist tight and _called_.  
  
Mana the color of forests at twilight streamed from her open hand. It rushed to form a shape in front of her and congealed into a sturdy metal tower shield on her arm. Years of training meant the process took as long as a breath.  
  
The flames broke on the shield and sprayed out and around her in a searing corona. The concussive force pushed her back a few inches, made her boots and the bottom of her shield drag ditches into the dirt.  
  
In the aftermath, she heard the voice cackle. It seemed to come from all around her, from every burning home.  
  
“ _The miracle seller preaches sacrament to bandits, and this one speaks to us of_ mercy!”  
  
Hana’s pulse pounded in her ear. Sweat beaded on her face and wet her shawl.  
  
 _Courage,_ she thought. _Discipline. Virtue._  
  
She straightened and peered over the top of her shield. Her eyes scanned the flames. “Do you deflect because you fear your guilt?”  
  
“ _We relish this one’s delusions of righteousness. This one, that serves a gilded parliament of pillagers and thieves, whose favored gorge on decadence and debauchery. Whose flock know only the barn and the fence.”_ It laughed again. _“Whose opponents are made slaves, or soldiers.”_  
  
She listened close. In front, not behind. Left of center. “We were offered options in execution’s stead. Opportunities.”  
  
“ _Opportunities? This one’s masters bind our kind to broken children and sacrifice both in battle.”_  
  
“We must. Our enemies amass terrible power-”  
  
“ _According to who, we wonder?”_  
  
“According to fact. That is the way of things now.”  
  
“ _Say the men who order it so. Says the vessel that forces Craftsman to forge only weapons._ ”  
  
Hana strained her ears. One of three whose roofs had yet to cave. “I had thought a spirit of hunger and need would understand the pre-eminence of necessity.”  
  
It scoffed, and every flame began to smolder. “ _This one believes us to be Need,_ ” it hissed, crackling with contempt. “ _We do not deceive ourselves, as this one does. We see and embrace our deepest self. We are_ Want.”  
  
There.  
  
Her shield dissolved into mana which became the body of a longbow in her hand. In one moment, she drew her other hand along the binding runes inked on her wrist. In the next, she was drawing back both bowstring and arrow. She loosed it at a flame-wreathed figure in a doorway without blinking.  
  
The blaze there flared before the arrow struck, then flared again in a different home.  
  
She already had another arrow notched. She turned, aimed, and fired.  
  
Window, third from the right. Hay bale, left peripheral. Each just barely too late. She almost missed the last flash, hidden as it was amongst the brightest blaze.  
  
Inside the mill house.  
  
Hana _called_ with all her will. Mana flooded the ground and wound itself into a length as long as she was tall and wider around, then solidified into a cannon with a thud. She plucked a burning leaf from the tree and held it to its vent.  
  
First, a deafening boom. Then, wood-splintering impact. The roof caved in with a crash.  
  
This time, there was no flare.  
  
When the dust settled, Hana was surprised to hear weak, pitiful sobs coming from inside.  
  
The cannon became a longsword in her hand. She marched up to the door and kicked it in.  
  
A girl in a tattered, stained white shift was inside, propped up on her elbows, her legs trapped beneath the ruin of the roof. She looked a disheveled, malnourished mess.  
  
“I don't want to die,” she whimpered.  
  
Hana's grip on her sword tightened. “Show me your wrist.”  
  
Tears sizzled down the girl's gaunt cheeks. “P-please. I'm so scared.”  
  
She squeezed the handle until it hurt. “Your wrist.”  
  
With a resignation Hana knew too well, the girl held out her left arm and turned it over.  
  
Her wrist was a sickening mess of dark, warped burn scars, seared in messy lines approximating binding runes. The seal was missing key components; the spirit was bound, but barely restricted. Still, the connection was complete. Amputation would purge nothing.  
  
“I can't hold it off long. Please.”  
  
Hana could barely speak. “...If you tell me who did this to you, I promise I'll make them see justice.”  
  
The girl gave the slightest shake of the head. “I did.”  
  
Hana’s gut clenched. “You did this willingly?”  
  
Her arm was shaking. “I needed the power. My father beat me, my- my mother watched. The whole town knew and did nothing. I _needed_ to stop them.”  
  
Bitter revelation scalded her tongue. “But you _wanted_ more. You wanted revenge.”  
  
The girl was shaking all over now. “I didn't want _this_. Not for any of the other towns. I swear on all that's left of me, I didn't.”  
  
Sweat drenched Hana’s brow and stung her eyes. She raised her blade. “Nor I.”  
  
The girl gasped and jerked, and the spirit twisted her lips in a snarl. “ _You cannot kill us!”_ Flames sprouted from their shared body. “ _The Shaper outlives your charge, and we will outlive this wretch!_ ”  
  
As Hana's blade came down, she realized that, before the spirit had turned her eyes a glaring orange, they had been emerald green.  
  
A girl's head fell from the spirit’s body, and both went still.  
  
“Courage,” Hana rasped, barely a whisper. “Discipline. _Virtue_.”  
  
The words tasted like ash.  
  


~

  
Walking back up the hill, Hana could only hear her own footsteps. The ruins had gone silent, had lost even the crackle and hiss of their razing.  
  
As she mounted her horse, she looked to the sky, hoping to glimpse stars through the clouds.  
  
There were none to be found. Black smoke joined the clouds, mixed and muddled until she couldn't tell one from the other. Together, they choked the light from the heavens.  
  
Hana pulled her shawl down so it hung round her neck and buried her head in her hands.


	3. Messy Mechanisms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ccup 4 match  
> Prompt: Bonesaw // Aegis // Sci-fi AU // Annoyed

_“Jack- (Jack!) Slash- (Slash!) slashing all his prices  
On each of your fa-vo-rite devices  
Holo-Views, fission cells, Or-gan-i-tech splices-  
Come down to The Bunker today!”_  
  
Riley hummed along to the ad on the HV, swaying and bouncing to the melody. She was so excited about her incoming delivery and thinking about it only amplified that excitement. She hummed louder and bounced higher, and by the last line she was outright singing.  
  
“Riley!” her mommy snapped. She was in the kitchen, looking up from the oven’s control panel to glower at her.  
  
Riley stopped bouncing. She gave her best puppy dog eyes. “Sorry. I'm just really, really looking forward to it.”  
  
Her mommy sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “No, I'm… I'm sorry I snapped. Just, please try and keep it down.”  
  
She smiled. “I will, promise!”  
  
Then a fast food ad with an android pop star came on and she found herself humming again.  
  
Moments later, the doorbell bleeped.  
  
Riley gasped and shot out of her seat. Her mommy chastised her for running in the house but by then she was already at the entryway, skidding to a stop. She hit the touch interface by the door and it slid open.  
  
A scraggly twenty-something in a Bunker Deliveries SubCo polo and a datatracker visor stood on the welcome mat. He looked down at her and frowned. It made his wispy little mustache skew in a funny way. “Uhh, Ms. Davis?”  
  
“Mhm!” She nodded a lot, though her eyes never left the package in his hands.  
  
He hesitated, then shrugged. “Scan here,” he said, holding out a tablet.  
  
The moment it was done collecting her thumbprint she grabbed the box and hugged it close. “Thanks so much mister have a nice day bye-bye!” She engaged the door and lock before he had a chance to respond.  
  
She held the package out to inspect. It was made of lightweight plastifiber, and just looking at the Toybox SubCo logo made her bounce on the balls of her feet. She couldn't hold off- she had to get it out of the box right away. She half-walked, half-ran down the hall. “Going upstairs for a bit!”  
  
“Riley!”  
  
She stopped at the base of the stairs. “Yeah?”  
  
“Dinner’s about to start coagulating. Leave your new thing up there and wait to play with it until after you've eaten.”  
  
She groaned. “I'm not gonna _play_ with it, I'm twelve! Not a baby anymore. And- I'll be back in time for dinner, just- just- it's from Uncle Jacob!”  
  
“Big girls don't throw tantrums, sweetie.”  
  
She pouted. Her mommy was right, but it still wasn't fair. “…What if I do the dishes after? Pleeeaaase?”  
  
A pause. “Alright, fine, but-”  
  
Riley was already bounding up the steps. “Thank you thank you thank you!”  
  
“We never went through any of this with Drew…” her mommy muttered.  
  
Riley pretended not to hear that. She raced past the landing to her work room, wishing sliding doors could be slammed. It shut behind her with a faint pneumatic hiss.  
  
The ceiling lights came on in sequence, staggered to let her eyes get used to the brightness. First, they came on over her workstation, steel-topped and covered with blueprints and works-in-progress. Next, they lit her parts cabinets, just as her mechanical spiders scuttled out of the bottom drawer and took positions around the room. Finally, they revealed the bed by the far window, the only remaining indication that this had ever been a guest room.  
  
“Make room,” she said, and the spiders dragged parts and projects to the fringes of her workstation. She climbed the stepping stool in front of it and set the Toybox delivery down in the middle. “Prep me,” she said, and two more pulled thin gloves over her outstretched hands. Then they tied her curls back and secured a paper mask over her nose and mouth.  
  
Her fingers were poised over the release latches on the box when she heard a knock.  
  
She grinned wide, making the paper mask crinkle. Perfect timing. She stepped off the stool, dragged it to the bed, and skipped to the window.  
  
Outside, hovering at standing level despite being two stories up, was a young man with warm brown skin and long hair. He wore the standard-issue Aegis Securities body armor but wasn't displaying a badge. One arm hung limp, dripping with dark, viscous fluid.  
  
Riley worked the window control with her elbow. The glass pane slid away, followed by the outer screen, until there was only open air between them.  
  
“Hi Carlos!” she beamed. “Where’d you get hurt this time?”  
  
He pointed to a small gap in his body armor and wheezed out, “ _Punctured lung._ ” Then, to his limp arm. “ _This too._ ”  
  
She tutted, then moved towards the bed, climbing the stool. “So reckless. Alright, come in. And turn your thrusters off first, okay?”  
  
“ _One time_ ,” he groused, positioning to lean over the sill. The faint hum of his thrusters cut out and he pulled himself inside. The effort made his chest whistle.  
  
“Windows, sheet,” she said, and spiders closed the window and draped plastic over the bed. “One time made one big mess. Now lie down, buster.”  
  
He unbuckled his chest armor, set it by the foot of the bed and flopped down. The wetness on his arm dripped and pooled in the folds of the plastic. Hydraulic fluid, by the looks of it.  
  
She unzipped his modal-fabric shirt down to the seventh rib. One of her spiders perched on her shoulder and shined a light on the wound. It was two inches long, wide enough to peer through, and deep enough that she couldn't see the bottom, even straight on. It caved when he breathed in and swelled when he breathed out.  
  
“Woof. How'd you get this?”  
  
He huffed, and the wound swelled. “ _Stopped a mugging_.”  
  
“Cooool.” She pointed at one of the spiders, told it what tools to get from which cabinet drawer, and turned back to him, hands clasped by her chest. “Well, good news is, the experimental coagulating agent I put in you last time worked great. Clots at the severance points, dry everywhere else, and your regulatory system diverted flow around the cut. So, yay!”  
  
He looked away, frowning without frowning. “ _Didn't know-_ ”  
  
“Shh, hold your breath for a bit.” The spider carried the forceps and binding laser to her waiting hand. His lung needed more tweaking, so that shutdown processes would also cut off airflow to and from the affected lung. She could make up the oxygen intake difference through the skin, or maybe with screening tissue in the throat.  
  
That all would have to wait, though- she was on a time limit. She moved the synthetic organ into position with the forceps and closed the wound with the laser. She did the same to the dermal layers. “Okay, you're good.”  
  
He breathed deep. No chest whistle. “I didn't know you'd put that in me. When nothing leaked there, I thought I was having a fatal malfunction.”  
  
She started on his arm. Hydraulics were much simpler than synthetic organs. “Well, you weren't, so… yay?”  
  
This time he actually frowned. Glowered, almost. “You didn't tell me, and you didn't ask if I was okay with it.”  
  
She replaced the fluid and sealed the gash. “So? You said I could test stuff on you whenever I fix you up.”  
  
He flexed his arm. “The need for permission should still be implied.”  
  
“But- don't you get how important this is? Organitech is so new, there's so much potential!” Uncle Jacob understood. He gave her tons of tech to experiment with and only asked to see whatever she invented. He never made her ask permission.  
  
He let his arm fall. His brow furrowed. “Riley… I appreciate what you do for me, really. Our deal is the only reason I can afford to go vigilante on the side.” He met her eyes. “But I need you to tell me what you're testing on me before you put it in, alright?”  
  
She wanted to tell him he shouldn't be arguing about this. That it wasn't fair, not when she was helping him so much, but…  
  
 _Big girls don't throw tantrums_ , she thought. _Be a big girl._  
  
“...I got a new Gemma processor module today. I was gonna tweak it to do stuff like adapt coagulators for all your fluids, so you wouldn't leak from other parts. Like your arm hydraulics.” She swallowed. “Is that okay?”  
  
He smiled. “That sounds great.”  
  
She nodded. “Okay. Okay, cool, it'll just be a minute to mod, and then-”  
  
The intercom on the door’s interface panel buzzed. “Riley,” her mommy spoke, “come down now, dinner’s ready.”  
  
She really, really, _really_ wanted to groan.  
  
But she didn't.  
  
She shooed Carlos out the window, peeled off her gloves and mask, sent the spiders back to the drawer and flipped the lights off. She didn't even groan when she started down the stairs.  
  
She hummed instead.  
  
“ _Hm-hm! Hm-hm! Hm-hm-mm hm-mm-mm…_ ”


	4. Plunder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CCup 4 match  
> Prompt: Imp // King // Historical AU // Resplendent

“A real fine thing, eh sir?”  
  
Gabriel clasped his hands behind his back. The light sea winds tousled his golden locks, teased the collar of his indigo coat. “The winds favor my schedule, the hull brims with my tobacco crop, and this crew of yours has managed to keep my pace.” He glanced at the stout man manning the helm beside him. “A fine thing indeed, Captain.”  
  
The man smiled, a tad tight, and stroked his dark beard. “Meant more th’ look of th’ sky and such.”  
  
The sun had beaten them to the horizon. Blazing orange and vivid crimson marked its landing, and each wave it touched was set alight. As night crept in behind them, the display beckoned onward with promises of tomorrow's opportunities.  
  
Gabriel smiled back. “Quite captivating.”  
  
In truth, his mind was on other matters. Potential new tarrifs waiting for him in New England. The state of his puppet companies in Recife, jeopardized by brewing insurrection. Whether the rest of the West Indies would be as easy to control as the island they'd left behind that morning. He wouldn't be able to quell these uncertainties until they next made port.  
  
But there was one issue he could deal with now.  
  
“Any word on the search?”  
  
The captain frowned and muttered, “Search…?” under his breath. “Oh, that! You're still frettin’ on that?”  
  
Gabriel set his jaw. “You have a stowaway aboard pilfering rations and supplies, and you call my concern ‘fretting’?”  
  
He frowned. “My men don't miss much. If we’ve a stowaway, they're quick like the wind and just as hard t’see. More likely, them candles and pitch got misplaced or some such.”  
  
“And the bread?”  
  
“Prob’ly just some swabbie what thought himself quick-finger’d. We'll ferret ‘em out ‘fore we even make land. No need for all the ado of a search, I say.”  
  
Gabriel turned to face the captain and leaned in to emphasize his imposing height. “This may be your crew, and this may be your ship, _Captain_ , but know this. My wealth cannot be measured by simply counting money. My subordinates run companies with more workers than some nations. My every action moves the world. So when I deign to hire your crew and ship and I call for order to be restored?” He grit his teeth. “You _listen_.”  
  
Wide-eyed, the captain managed to say, “A-aye. I'll have the night watch do a full sweep. Sir.”  
  
Gabriel searched his face for a long moment, then nodded and turned away. “Is the cabin prepared as I requested?”  
  
“Aye. Got your food set out and ev’rything.”  
  
“Then I shall retire. I expect good news come morning.”  
  
The captain smiled tightly. “G’night, sir.”  
  
Gabriel ignored him and headed below deck. His thoughts churned as he walked. The only thing he despised more than uncertainty was disrespect, and this mysterious stowaway was guilty of inflicting both upon him. It would trouble his sleep that night, he could already tell.  
  
He strode into the cabin and shut the door behind him. It was spacious and simple, featuring sparse furnishing and wide windows with diamond-shaped muntins. The curtains were open, letting the moonlight in at a downward angle, creeping across the floor. The desk in the center had been set with a cloth and cutlery, its chair on the other side. Cheese had been cut from a wheel and plated with bread. A bottle of whiskey sat in a wooden stand next to an undecorated mug.  
  
It was a rather plain display, but at the moment he needed a drink more than a three-course meal. He stopped before the desk and reached for the bottle. The cork came out with accommodating ease. He poured a generous amount into the mug and lifted it to his lips. It tasted worse than cheap, but he downed it anyways and set the mug back down.  
  
 _Click._  
  
Gabriel whirled around.  
  
A girl stepped out of a dark corner of the room. Her skin was brown, her clothes were black and filthy and patched in places, and her hair was pulled back into braids. A scarf hid half her face. She held a flintlock pistol in both hands, hammer cocked, pointed right at his chest.  
  
He huffed a smug laugh, looking down at her, eyelids low with contempt. “So the elusive stowaway is merely some islander rat. I find myself almost disappointed.”  
  
She said nothing. The pistol glinted in the moonlight.  
  
“What is it you want, then? The food? My pocket money? A hostage?”  
  
Her aim was steady.  
  
He scoffed. “Do you even know English?”  
  
The girl spoke low, with less of an accent than he'd expected. “Your kind took over my home ‘fore I was born. Couldn’t not learn.” Her eyes narrowed. “Sorry if it in’t quite King’s English. Now, take a seat, yeah?”  
  
He moved slow, out of both caution and the alcohol settling into his system. He stepped around the desk and lowered into the chair. When he was settled his lips curled up at the corners. “You're no stowaway at all, are you? Is this piracy, then? Or perhaps some misguided attempt at vengeance.”  
  
She chuckled. “‘Misguided’ my arse. Yer the guiltiest man I ever met.”  
  
He arched a brow. “I'd thank you to show me the respect I'm due. Whatever my countrymen did to your home, I did not take part in it. I'm afraid my hands are clean.”  
  
“They’da done fuck-all without yer coin an’ yer orders. _You_ tilled my family's soil ‘til you'd reaped the life from it. _You_ worked my people at gunpoint, shot the ones who wouldn't bend, paid the rest a pittance, an’ left my home barren an’ ill when you were done. An’ for what? So white folks can smoke to their hearts’ content half a world away from 'ere?” Her gaze hardened. “Yer hands’re filthy as yer spirit.”  
  
He planted his hands on the desk for balance and leaned over it, sneering. “And what will you do about it, little girl? You shoot me and the crew will be upon you in an instant. You will be captured. Tortured. Then my subordinates will learn of what you did and they will take all you and your people have left to lose.” His sneer twisted into a smile. “It would be the greatest mistake of your short, pathetic life.”  
  
“Figured as much. That's why I wasn't gonna shoot ya t’begin with.”  
  
“Do tell, th’nn-” He cleared his throat to cover the word he'd slurred and leaned against the back of the chair. The whiskey must have been stronger than he'd anticipated. “Do tell, then, what is to stop me from overpowering you and taking your little toy away?”  
  
“The poison I put in yer drink, ‘course.”  
  
His eyes widened. “Wh-” He choked on the word, coughing. He raised a hand to his throat but it was locked in a fist at his side.  
  
“Feelin’ it now? Limbs gettin’ tingles, muscles stuck flexin’, face gone numb?”  
  
He made to speak, but tongue felt swollen and his jaw wouldn't unclench. He ground out a muffled, “Mnn! Cm hh-!”  
  
“Real strong para- er, wass’th’word -paralytic! Or that's what the bloke I got it from said. Won't kill anyone isself, but it'll keep 'em from gettin’ away. I'll tell you what _will_ kill ya, though.” She lowered the pistol and started casually gesturing with it. “See, cut candles into pieces, an' what ya get is a bunch of fuses with a li’l delay. An' then… well, tobacco burns well 'nuff, and there sure is lots down there in the hull, right under 'ere. But what’ll really keep a fire goin’ is some _pitch_.”  
  
His mouth went dry.  
  
“So yeah. Have fun sittin’ there while everythin’ goes up in smoke, knowin’ ya can't do a damn thing to stop it. Maybe you’ll get some idea what it was like for me. Well, before you start goin’ up too, that is.”  
  
The tension spread over the rest of his body, and with the last loss of agency came animal panic. Far from being able to control his body, he struggled to control his very thoughts.  
  
Before leaving, she tugged her scarf down, leaned over him, and grinned fiercely. “Here's yer due respect, despicable bloody bastard.” She made a guttural sound in her throat as though coughing up mucus, then spat on his cheek.  
  
He watched her slip out of the cabin and secure the door behind her, furious, helpless. He tried to shout for help, but no sound escaped his lips. He strained to move his legs, but they wouldn't even twitch.  
  
Viscous spit and petulant tears streaked down his face to stain the collar of his fine indigo coat, and Gabriel waited to burn with his crop.  
  


~

  
It was a cloudless night. The sea was calm and quiet. The wind was gentle and smelled of smoke.  
  
Aisha let go of the lifeboat’s oars to give her aching hands a break. She’d rowed out so far that the ship now looked a vague, glowing shape on the horizon’s edge. Only by squinting could she tell that the flames were now reaching the deck.  
  
She had to keep going. The crew would be taking the other lifeboat back to land, and she needed to beat them there to get away clean. A head start wouldn't mean anything if she slacked off.  
  
Just as she gripped the oars again, the distant fire flared. Either the sails had caught or some gunpowder had gone off, or both. The resulting display captivated her, lit up the horizon in orange and crimson. Its radiance beckoned to her, tempted her to bask in the thrill of what she'd done. The power she'd wielded.  
  
The slightest of silhouettes approached from the wreckage.  
  
Aisha averted her eyes, pulled up her scarf and rowed away.


	5. Faithful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My Secret Santa one-shot for BurningCrab on Cauldron  
> Years after Pastor’s death and mere weeks after Gold Morning, the walled-in survivors of Freedom, California uncover the true reason their town was quarantined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Supplementary Word of God:
> 
> The nature of the footage is at odds with what it contains. A church, the type that appears in a smaller town, a fervent, excited congregation sitting in the pews, not a one of them able to sit still. The sound is muffled, as the person tries to hide the camera, rustling it against clothing, and the video itself crackles and pops, glitching with regularity, as if caught in an electrical storm.
> 
> The man at the front is heavy without being fat, hair cut short, dressed up in holy vestments. His voice is muffled, as he speaks to the room. He reaches down, touching the forehead of a girl who kneels before him, and words can be made out - ‘gift of God’.
> 
> The distortion of the camera flares. It takes a full minute to fade.
> 
> When the picture resolves, the man at the front of the church is standing, holding the hands of two young people. The girl’s eyes glow, visible despite the glitching and buzzing of the camera, cracks running from her eyes around the back of her head and down her neck, glows periodically showing through the cracks. The boy is still changing, muscles moving visibly beneath skin as if they are something alive, and the cracks in his skin don't reach as far, but they're far deeper where they do exist. The crowd’s singing reaches a crescendo- and the video cuts.
> 
> When the video resumes, the crackling is just as bad, even though the location is different.
> 
> “Please help,” the person holding the camera says. “I won’t name myself because-”
> 
> Static.
> 
> “-in Freedom California. They won’t let us leave. I repeat, please help. We’re in Free-”
> 
> The remainder of the recording plays out for the next minute, but the audio and video are nothing but static.
> 
> \- Wildbow, on Pastor.

Dawn poured in through the window. Light flooded polished floorboards, submerged simple furnishings, drowned framed photos. Soon the whole room was lit up with the pale gold of the new day, save two slivers of shade: one, the space beneath the desk, and two, the cross-shape of the muntins in the window above it.  
  
Abigail was already up, folding her threadbare sheets back into order, smoothing out the wrinkles with her hand. She straightened her quilt and fluffed her pillow, and when she was done it was impossible to tell there'd been anyone in the bed at all.  
  
The picture on her side table was askew. She stared at it a moment, then set it back in place.  
  
Her nightgown, with its pilling fabric and loose sleeves, received the same treatment as her sheets before she returned it to its crooked wire hanger. Today's clothes sat folded on her chair and she tugged them on, ignoring the way the starched shirt chafed her sensitive skin and the pleated khakis hung loose on her lean frame.  
  
She spent long, quiet minutes braiding her chestnut tresses into tight order. While she worked, sounds from the fields filtered in through the thin walls. The clucking of chickens leaving their cramped coop for feed. The squeals of pigs waiting at their trough. The sloshing of milk buckets being carried away for the morning's breakfast. She tied her braid off with twine.  
  
She sat at her desk and leaned over a wide bowl. Its water, placid as glass, reflected her image.  
  
It was hard to look at that face and see in its shape the same girl in the picture. A teenager, a student, a runner, a sister, a daughter. The young woman in the water was none of those things. The chunk of her right ear that had long ago been torn out only accentuated the differences that were already there.  
  
She splashed her face with the water, washing off the night's sweat, then looked up out the window.  
  
Beyond her home stretched the same field she'd woken to since she'd been fourteen. Wheat bent under its own weight, presenting its stalk, ready for harvest. Sun kissed the vivid blues and reds of berries, ripe as they'd ever be. For a moment, she could forget herself and let memory blur into the present.  
  
But no wind would ever send waves through the flaxen fields and no dawn would again come undelayed, because just past the very last homes at the edge of town loomed a great unyielding wall, smooth and grey and curved to contain the entirety of Freedom. Its tenders had abandoned their posts weeks ago, left the survivors without any outside supply, but still the wall stood.  
  
She stood as well. There was food to be prepared, a sermon to be heard, and work to be done, and in all things right and necessary, Abigail was a believer.  
  


†

  
"We've had a traitor among us."  
  
Half the congregation leaned forward in their pews. Men, mostly. Farmhands, mostly, either by old world trade or necessity. Work-worn hands rested on knees, stubbled jowls tightened in flat frowns. Others sat straight up, hands clasped together, faces like masks. Eyes all around the room glanced sidelong at their neighbors.  
  
Father Sullivan's beady eyes leered out from beneath his bushy grey brows. He leaned past the pulpit and surveyed the meager congregation, passing over Abigail quicker than most. The silence stretched a long moment before he wet his thin lips. "Been some years now, since that wall went up. Since troops stormed our little town, split our flock." He paused again, and here his gaze settled on her. "Spit on our dead."  
  
Her gut twisted.  
  
"Most of us figured we'd been found by the so-called Protectorate, scried by their misguided gifted. We'd known they'd come for us this way eventually, hoped to have time enough to prepare, that we might defend our way of life. When they came early, we thought they'd had someone with a real clever gift. But this tells another story."  
  
Mike, last of His gifted, stood ramrod-straight beside and just behind Father Sullivan. His shirt was stainless, his shoes were shined, and the golden glow that subsumed his eyes was dim. The cracks spiderwebbing his skin glowed dimmer still, and if Abigail wasn't mistaken there was a new fault running along his throat. His blond hair, once brown, had been combed thoroughly to erase any trace of cowlick.  
  
He handed something to Father Sullivan, who held it up. A small, black oval shape with a cracked screen. A piece of elastic string dangled limp and frayed from a small aperture included to accommodate small trinkets and charms. Torn away.  
  
Around Abigail, the congregation drew sharp breaths, shifted in their seats, muttered about Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  
  
Father Sullivan's jaw set. "A phone. One that should've been collected along with all the rest. One Michael here found-" he licked his lips again "-hidden under the floorboards of the old Turner home." The crowd reeled again, and he waited for them to settle down.  
  
Old Mrs. MacIntyre placed a hand on Abigail's forearm. Abigail folded a hand over hers to reassure her.  
  
"Now, it might be that we've not got the whole story here. I'll admit there could be a lot of reasons they'd have kept this hid away. But given they were the last to enter the fold and the first to run when the raids began… well." He shook his head. "With that and everything else, I think the picture this paints is pretty clear."  
  
Mike didn't seem to react. His brow didn't furrow, his mouth didn't twitch, and his posture didn't shift. But his head turned an inch in her direction, and she knew he didn't quite agree.  
  
"Our Pastor was a hard man, and his rules were tough. His gifted were tougher still, and I know that wore many of us down. But his word was God's, and God's word is law." He held the phone up again. "This is what comes of disorder. Of disunity. Men die, movements falter, and good folks get caged like animals." He handed the phone back to Mike. "I pray such horrors never come to pass again. I ask that He gives us the will to stay true, and hope that all of us find the courage to keep going down the righteous path. Amen."  
  
"Amen," echoed the congregation.  
  
"Amen," said Abigail.  
  


†

  
The community kitchen was perhaps the most crowded place in the whole town. Women of all ages bustled around notch-pocked tables and improvised woodstoves, rushing half-prepped foodstuffs to and fro. Seasonings to be gathered, vegetables to be seasoned, meats to be garnished, meals to be cooked. One learned to keep up with the current or else was washed away by it.  
  
Abigail held the sharpening steel steady with one hand, the end planted in the deepest notch in the table. Her other hand dragged a kitchen knife down its length such that the motion started with the tool near the knife's handle and ended with the tool at the knife's tip, each swipe keeping the edge in alignment. The subtle, whining grind of steel on steel centered her mind, kept her focus where it needed to be.  
  
A door swung open in her peripheral and the flow of the room around her came to a halt.  
  
Were it a farmhand or a woodworker, the others may have cooed, flirted or teased, or else derided, chastised, or otherwise punished. Even Father Sullivan would have gotten some hello's; someone would have said something, anything. But no one did.  
  
Not until Abigail, without looking up, said, "I'm busy, Mike."  
  
His voice echoed despite the kitchen's poor acoustics. "It's important."  
  
The grind of steel filled the silence between them. "More important than dinner?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
She doubted it, but put her tool and knife down anyways. "Three minutes. Then I need to get back to work."  
  
She waited long enough for him to depart, then smoothed out her apron and followed him out the door.  
  
Mike stood at the threshold between the wild grass and the tilled fields, at the end of a well-trod path. A few years ago, he might have had his thumbs hooked into the loops of his jeans, or blocked the sun from his eyes with a work-calloused hand. Instead his hands were balled in fists at his sides, unmarred save for the cracks of light, and the gold in his eyes only seemed brighter for the direct sunlight. He hovered an inch off the ground, the last vestige of his dwindling ability to fly.  
  
She stopped before him and met his gaze. "Alright. I'm listening."  
  
He hesitated. Even outside, his words echoed unnaturally. "No one's giving you trouble for the ear, are they? Making fun of your hearing."  
  
She folded her arms to keep from reaching up and touching the notch in her ear. "No, no one's done anything like that in a long time. Lots of people have scars from the raids. I think I hear better now, anyways. Or, I don't just hear what's in front of me anymore, so there's never been anything to make fun of in the first place. You can stop asking."  
  
He nodded, though she knew which part of that he'd listened to and which he hadn't. "Have you heard anything unusual lately? About the Turners, or the phone, maybe?"  
  
"Nothing but gossip. And if you're so desperate for a different answer that you'll listen to the rumors of bored old women, maybe it's a sign you should stop looking."  
  
His face betrayed no emotion. "We owe it to Him to know the whole truth. We owe our Pastor certain justice."  
  
She looked to the farmhands out in the field, then behind her to the door to the kitchen. "We owe them, too. They deserve closure, and if you get them riled up looking for a conspiracy they'll never find, they'll never get to move on. They won't grow."  
  
"False closure is no closure at all, Abigail."  
  
"And hard truths still need to be swallowed." She let out a shaky sigh. "Look. I liked the Turners too. I spent more time with them than anyone, even you. But everything points to them calling the PRT and bringing them here. To them being responsible for our Pastor getting shot in the head." She shivered. "To them killing Dad too."  
  
"That's what you believe, then?"  
  
Her voice rose over his echo. "What else could have happened? His body was in their living room after the raids. He had scratch marks all over him. He had a poker in his chest, while everyone else that died that day got fucking shot!" She caught herself and straightened up, eyes on the dirt between them. "I know you don't remember things so well anymore, but I do. I can't forget. They killed him, Mikey. They killed him and I have to live with that."  
  
She couldn't look up, not when the moment dragged, nor when he turned and drifted away. She turned too, back toward the kitchen. Down the path, through the door, past the other cooks. She looked down at her station, at the tray of plucked chickens and cutting board that had been set there.  
  
The noise all around her seemed cacophonous. She was struggling to focus her eyes in front of her. Her thoughts were awhirl. Her hands were shaking. A strand of chestnut hair had come loose from her braid.  
  
But she had work to do, and duty loomed.  
  
She placed a whole chicken on the cutting board. She spread the legs at the joints, took her knife and carved past muscle and fat until it came off. She did the same with the wings. By the time she was slicing into the breast, her hands moved steady and true. She asked one of the women with clean hands for a favor, and she let her tuck the loose strand behind her ear.  
  
She split the meat around the bone and moved on.  
  


†

  
There was still more work when dinner was done. Plates, bowls, and cutlery had to be collected, along with whatever uneaten scraps could be used for fertilizer or pig feed. Tables had to be cleaned, cleared of crumbs, any stained tablecloths gathered to be washed out right away. Most of the men would retire to their homes, worn from fieldwork and possibly drunk off home brew. A few would stick around and help replace barrels of rainwater for washing dishes. The washing itself, though, that was women's work.  
  
Plates stacked in one hand and cutlery gathered in the other, Abigail managed to maneuver Father Sullivan's plate onto the stack with her few free fingers and moved to take his fork.  
  
He raised his hand to stop hers and met her eyes, bushy brows scrunched together and upturned at the inner corners. "Abigail, dear. How are you holding up?"  
  
She blinked and reoriented her focus. "I'm fine, Father. Thank you for asking."  
  
He frowned. "It's awful news we've gotten today. For you and Michael more than anyone. It's alright to be struggling with it."  
  
She nodded, her lips pressing into a flat line. "It's… challenging. But I think, maybe, on some level, I might have expected it."  
  
"No lie can hide the whole truth. But even if you suspected it, it can be far more hurtful to have it confirmed. I just want to make sure you know you are supported and loved. No one here will let what your family went through happen ever again."  
  
She almost laughed, but kept it down. "That's the thing, Father. I think it might. The way things are I really think it will. Because… because there's this notion I can't get out of my head. Makes me think I knew it would happen even before it did."  
  
He paused, concern shining in his beady eyes. "What is it, child?"  
  
"There's a piece of God in all of us already, right? Gifted or not. I just wonder if…" She drew in a slow breath. "If putting all our faith in the God in our Pastor meant we let the God in people like the Turners go neglected."  
  
Father Sullivan leaned back in his chair and let out a slow breath. His wrinkled hand covered his mouth, rubbed his smooth-shaven jowls. When he placed it back onto the table his gaze was where his plate had been. "I can't honestly say I haven't considered the same myself, dear. Can't honestly say. But you're right, that it's more important to consider now than ever." He shook his head. "Tell you what, if this is still on your mind come tomorrow, I'll be here to talk about it with you. That sound good?"  
  
She smiled, just a little, and picked up his fork. "I'll try and find time."  
  
When she turned to go he stopped her again. "And if you could, sit down with Michael as well. It can be a comfort, to know you're not alone in challenging times, and on some level he's got to be struggling too. He may not remember that time so well, but when it comes down to it, he's still your brother."  
  
Her gaze lingered on her full and busy hands.  
  
"I will," she said.  
  


†

  
Abigail woke to the subtle glow of dawn trickling in through her window.  
  
It had been a long time since the morning had beaten her to the day, and for a moment, bleary-eyed and off-guard, she felt like swearing. That is, until her vision focused and she noticed something.  
  
When the cross-shaped shadow descended, it did so at an angle.  
  
Quick and quiet as she could, she settled back into a resting position. Her hands tugged the loose sleeves of her nightgown up to her wrists. Her loose hair splayed around her on her pillow. The tension in her body and in her face went slack and her breaths turned shallow once more. Her eyes stayed open just a crack, such that she was squinting through her lashes.  
  
The front door opened, then clicked closed. The dawn seeped in through the crack between the door and the floor. The knob twisted slow, and the door drifted open.  
  
Mike, still in his clean shirt and jeans and shined shoes, glided into her room. He glowed dimly, so dim she could look at his face even in the dark. He stopped by her side table and picked up the photo of her with him and Dad, and this close she could make out finer details. Like all His gifted before him, he didn't sleep, so the weary tilt to his mouth looked odd on him. He spent minutes just staring through the photo before he spoke.  
  
"I know you're up."  
  
She stayed quiet.  
  
"You used to do this when Dad asked you to do chores in the morning. Pretend to be asleep."  
  
She clutched her chest with both arms.  
  
"I still remember things, Abigail."  
  
"I know," she croaked.  
  
He put the picture down, askew, and moved toward the window. "I remember that you kept getting into fights with Dad after we moved here. I remember you used to go stay with Kelly Turner when it got bad." He reached under the desk, found a loose floorboard and pried it up with his fingers. When he rose again there was a small, plastic heart in his grip. He held it up between them, dangling by its torn elastic string.  
  
She drew in a deep breath.  
  
"I remember the charm you had on your phone."  
  
She threw her quilt off and tried to bolt past him, but the fraction of his gift was enough to let him intercept her. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed her to his chest. Her arms, already folded up, were trapped between them. All her fighting couldn't break her free.  
  
Through the rush of adrenaline some part of her noted that this was the closest he'd come to hugging her since he'd been gifted.  
  
The echo in his voice was so much louder up close. "Was that your phone?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Did you call the PRT?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Did you kill Dad?"  
  
She swallowed a whimper. "He tried to kill me. He caught me taking a video and he tried to kill me for betraying Pastor. He pulled me by the ear until it tore. I-"  
  
His grip tightened, crushing her into him. The glow from his cracks burned her nerves to touch.  
  
"Did you kill Dad."  
  
"Y-yes."  
  
"Why didn't you leave with the others? With the Turners. Tell me."  
  
"There were good people who were staying. They needed help. They need help. They won't change because the world tells them to. It has to come from inside."  
  
He squeezed tighter still. The muted emotion in his tone was scarier than if he'd been yelling. "That change is exactly what got our Pastor murdered."  
  
"The charm," she gasped, fighting animal panic.  
  
His glaring eyes narrowed. "What?"  
  
His grip tightened, squeezing her ribcage, and her breaths came shallow. "You don't remember. Do you?"  
  
New cracks formed in quick succession. She felt it in the way his body tremored, in the new lines of light etched in golden fractures on the walls.  
  
Then the tremors stopped and the fresh lines settled. His grip on her relaxed, just an inch. "I remember. Don't try to tell me I don't. When you got your first phone, you bought that charm for it too. When you got a new phone, you put that same charm on it. I know it's yours. I remember."  
  
She choked on her heartbeat. Her arms wrapped around his waist and squeezed him in turn. "You don't," she said, squeezing her eyes shut. "You don't, and I'm so sorry."  
  
He tensed, and the glow around them flared bright gold, and the echo in his voice rang louder than his words. "I do, Abigail! I won't be fooled! I _know_ -"  
  
She plunged her kitchen knife into Michael's back, past shoulder blade and ribcage and muscle.  
  
"You gave it to me," she whispered.  
  
His grip on her went slack and she fell back onto the bed. Even with her eyes closed the light got brighter, like the sun had crashed through the great grey wall and come to take her back. Hundreds of little cracks fissured the dark of her eyelids.  
  
"Abby," he wheezed, small, unechoed, and in the quiet, the light flashed white.  
  
Steel clattered against wood, the air in the room went still, and the spots in her eyes faded to black. When she opened them again, he was gone, and the empty clothes and shoes on the ground were stained red. Blood puddled around a small plastic heart.  
  
Silence stretched and she curled in on herself. Shakes wracked her frame, sobs strangled and buried deep in her chest, suffocating her in the thrum of her pulse for the second time in her life. The bedframe rattled with her.  
  
When she could control her thoughts again she took deep breaths. She leaned back against the headboard and used it to straighten up. She imagined her spine to be a straightening steel and planted it firmly in the notch of duty.  
  
The clothes could be burned. The shoes would need to be buried, or else wiped off and hidden away in his room in the rectory. The blood would drip down between the floorboards, and the rest could be mopped up with a washrag and polished away. The washrag would need to be burned with the clothes. And, of course, the knife, once clean, would have to find its way back to the kitchen before breakfast prep. When all was done, no one would be able to tell there'd been anyone there but her.  
  
The charm, she would bury.  
  
People would ask questions when Michael failed to attend the morning's sermon, and she'd feign ignorance and channel her nerves into worry. As more days passed, they'd figure he'd gone the way of the older gifted, quietly burning out the last of his light in the dead of night. They'd hold a solemn service, and only then, when the sunken feelings in her chest had already gone cold, would she finally get the chance to mourn.  
  
She gathered her chestnut tresses and braided them into order. No wind rustled the grains in the field outside. No sunlight trickled in through the window. She heard only the slow, deep breaths in her chest, saw only what had to be done. Her braid was tied off with twine.  
  
She straightened the picture on her side table and stood.  
  
It was a lot of work for bruised arms and a heavy heart, but when it came down to it, she wasn't a runner. She would not shirk her responsibilities. In all things right and necessary, Abigail was a believer.


	6. Wagging the Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My Valentine's swap for MarcoFro5 on Cauldron!  
> Band AU, Cassie/Rachel. Cassie tries to figure out if she's made girlfriend status or if she's still just a glorified groupie.

Of all the venues in town, Somer's was by far the dingiest. One might call it quaint, being a small stack of bricks on a dying street that only just managed to stay afloat, but for anyone familiar with its dim lighting, ash-black walls and watery swill, the mind recoiled at the prospect of assigning a descriptor that could be misconstrued as positive. Under almost no circumstances was it a place one went to rather than somewhere one washed up; a deserted island for the dregs of shipwrecks.  
  
When the Undersiders were on stage, though? Somer's _rocked_.  
  
Brian, in his leather jacket and leather pants and nothing else, howling his best Trent Reznor impression. Taylor, curls curtaining her face, hunched over her guitar, weaving licks around melodies like her life depended on it. Lisa, lips as red as her dress was tight, balancing synth loops to keep the subtler aspects of the soundscape droning. Alec, all guyliner and costume jewelry in a too-deep v-neck, looking for all the world like he was playing hot crossed buns and not the thrumming eighth note bass pulse holding up the low end.  
  
And then there was Rachel.  
  
Rachel, whose bass drum rattled brains in skulls with each punctuating kick. Rachel, whose tom fills would rend a weaker woman’s eardrums asunder. Rachel, whose cymbals crashed and crashed as though they’d shatter if they ever fell silent. _Rachel,_ whose sticks were held together with duct tape, whose tank top and basketball shorts could barely contain her muscles, whose sweat-soaked auburn mop whipped every which way around her head, whose eyes were screwed closed and whose teeth were bared in feral ecstasy.  
  
From one of the few tables on the raised section in the back, Cassie saw it all. Being the closest things to VIPs that Somer’s would ever see, friends of the headliners got to stay above the cramped pit of fans, kept clear of the chaos of colliding bodies and spilled drinks. She absently cradled her own plastic cup in both hands, her focus wholly stolen by the way Rachel’s arms moved during the encore’s climax.  
  
Someone said something to Cassie. Unable to look away, she spared a meager, “Huh?”  
  
Whatever they repeated was lost in the cacophonous finale as minor and half diminished runs resolved into a major chord and the cymbals rang out in concussive bursts. When the loops cut and the cheers drowned out the settling crash, Rachel's wild eyes found Cassie in the crowd and gave a breathless look of intent.  
  
Cassie melted and smiled back.  
  
A finger snap in front of her face brought her back to Earth. She turned away from the band breaking down their setup.  
  
Chastity was seated across from her, phone in hand, eyes rolling. “Finally. I was this close to slapping you out of it, so I hope you appreciate my patience.”  
  
“Always do.” Cassie stuck her tongue out. “And I’m not _that_ bad.”  
  
Chastity put her phone down and gave her a look, like a mother humoring her kid. “Sure, sure. It’s not like you’re the biggest Undersiders groupie this side of Aisha or anything.”  
  
“Hey, she and Alec are still dancing around their thing. At least I’ve graduated from groupie to girlfriend.”  
  
“Oh really?” Chastity arched a fine brow. “She’s called you that, then? Out loud?”  
  
Cassie frowned, then tried to cover it by sipping her drink. She realized her mistake when the taste hit her and she grimaced anyway. "I mean, does she have to? We're together all the time, we've gone as far as you can go… Brutus even has his own bed at my place. If that's not dating I don't know what is."  
  
She scoffed. "This is Rachel Fucking Lindt we're talking about, Cassie! The same woman who clocked my idiot brother for using a joy buzzer on her. Because she thought it was an attack. You can't take _anything_ for granted with her."  
  
Cassie was fishing for reasons to refute the argument when she spotted the woman in question coming out from the hallway that led to the green room. The crowd between her and the tables parted for her like she was the Moses of metal. Her eyes were stuck to Cassie as she stepped up to the raised section of tables and closed the distance. She was still a little out of breath when she arrived, muscles taut with leftover adrenaline. Her sweaty tank top clung to her chest and stomach in irresistable ways.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Cassie rose to meet her, arms wrapping around her neck. “Hey.”  
  
Rachel leaned down to fetch a hungry kiss, teeth grazing against Cassie’s lower lip. The hot need on her breath almost made Cassie forget she’d ever worried about anything but returning the favor.  
  
Rachel broke away, pupils blown, face flush with satisfaction. “Wanna go?”  
  
Cassie licked her lips, just to savor the taste. “Anywhere.”  
  
Chastity made a gagging noise.  
  
Rachel took Cassie’s hand in hers and started towards the door. Cassie squeezed back and used her free hand to flip Chastity the bird as she was dragged away.  
  


\--+--

  
Rachel pulled off the road and onto a patch of gravel. She let the van roll along until they were just a handful of yards away from the barrier, then put it in park and set the emergency brake.  
  
She nodded to herself. “Here.”  
  
When she switched the engine off and the headlights clicked off, the view from the top of Captain’s Hill unfolded in front of them. Buildings shrank to anthills beneath their gazes, reduced to mere set dressing. Cranes looming over Lord’s Port and skyscrapers dwarfing downtown stretched up to meet their height but fell short. The glittering Boardwalk and southern beaches cupped the bay’s rolling waters. Held, but never contained.  
  
The whole situation was far more romantic than Cassie could have expected. The two of them, alone with this view, backdropped by the insectoid hum of the mountains’ nightlife. Rachel’s drums dropped off at Cassie’s apartment. Brutus dropped off at Cassie’s apartment.  
  
Their little love nest - Rachel’s air mattress and Cassie’s copious mound of blankets in the back - rebuilt now that the drums and dog were gone.  
  
Curiosity wrestled with anticipation and got a pin long enough for Cassie’s traitorous mouth to say, “A bit different from hiking trails and parking lots.”  
  
“Good, right?”  
  
“Yeah. Very good.” She leaned over the armrest to rest her head on Rachel’s shoulder. “What made you think of this?”  
  
“Alec asks me to drive him and Aisha up here sometimes, when they’re on acid.” She put a hand on Cassie’s head, absently scratching through her dark curls. “Thought we could make a lot of noise here. No one around. No fucking cops to knock on the window.”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
Rachel’s hand tugged on the base of her ponytail and Cassie obliged, letting Rachel kiss her. Another hand slipped between Cassie’s patch jacket and her shirt, and Cassie didn’t stop her from slipping it partway off her shoulders.  
  
Rachel pulled back to look at her, but her pupils were focused and her mouth was drawn into a frown. “Something’s wrong.”  
  
Cassie made an effort to banish her doubts. “No, I’m good. Just a little distracted. We can keep going.”  
  
Rachel shook her head and pulled back, though her hand never left Cassie’s shoulder. “No,” she insisted. “Something’s wrong.”  
  
A sigh expelled Cassie’s facade and she slumped into her seat. “Kind of. Just… Chastity said something, and-”  
  
Rachel growled. “I knew the gay shit bothered her.”  
  
“Not that! Really, nothing like that.” She broke eye contact. “She made me realize that, well, we haven’t actually put a name to this. Whatever this is.” Despite herself, she leaned into Rachel’s touch a bit. “Whatever we are.”  
  
She could hear the trepidation in Rachel’s tone, the vocal equivalent of a street mutt circling around a stranger. “Why does it need a name?”  
  
“Well, we need to know what it is we’re doing, right?”  
  
Rachel huffed. “I know what we’re doing. You do too. We don’t need words or shit like that getting in the way. Just mucks it up, makes people think they need to do shit that doesn’t matter.”  
  
“That’s the thing, I’m not sure I do know. Are we dating?”  
  
“No, we’re together.”  
  
Cassie sat up and met her steady gaze. Her brow furrowed. “What does _that_ mean?”  
  
Rachel’s hand left Cassie’s shoulder. She rubbed her own forehead with it instead. “I don’t give a shit about flowers. I can’t bring my dog to the beaches here. I don’t want any fucking French food, or any place like that, where there’s food butlers.”  
  
“Waiters?”  
  
“Those too. Do you like that shit?”  
  
Cassie frowned. Flowers were just obligations masquerading as gifts, she hated the feel of sand in her shoes, and she’d rather cook her own burger than pay ten bucks for one. “I guess not. But that’s- dating doesn’t have to mean all that. It’s about the intentions behind it.”  
  
“Yeah. We intend to be together, so we are.” She nodded like she’d just wrapped the whole issue up and sealed it away.  
  
“But what does that _mean?_ ”  
  
She groaned, loud and unabashed. “What the fuck do you want it to mean?”  
  
Cassie paused. “Well, for one, I want to know if we’re exclusive.”  
  
Rachel paused in turn, looking through Cassie. After a moment, she grunted and let her hand drift back up to Cassie’s curls. “I usually get kicked out of places like that.”  
  
Cassie rolled her eyes but didn’t push her away. “Are we being ‘together’ with other people too or no?”  
  
A considering hum, then, “No. I’m yours, you’re mine. Don’t want to complicate it.”  
  
Her chest felt lighter, but she refused to lose steam. “Okay. Good. Can I call you my girlfriend?”  
  
“Sure. Don’t mind. What else?”  
  
“Um…” She tried to find the right words to get across what she was hoping for, scrounged for the difference she needed. “Just, doing stuff to show that we care about each other? More than just sex, I mean.”  
  
Rachel nodded, slow this time, digestive. “Okay.” She looked out the window. “You liked that we came here, right? We can do that more.”  
  
Cassie placed a hand over Rachel’s where it was carding through her hair. “Yeah. That’s a good start.”  
  
They stayed like that for a long moment, watching each other in the low silvery glow of the stars above and city below. Familiar features painted in new light. Rachel’s lids drifted lower, bit by bit. Cassie’s lips curled up just as slow. Their fingers intertwined next to her head.  
  
“You still want the sex, right?”  
  
Cassie barked a laugh. Without another word she climbed over the armrest and dove into the warmth of the blanket pile, dragging Rachel along with her.


	7. Making Nice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My Valentine's pinch hit for DigitalAmber on Cauldron!  
> No powers AU. Taylor returns home from the Brockton U dorms for the summer. She's quite happy to spend more time with her dad; less so with her dad's new husband.

For the first time in months, Taylor stood in front of the house she grew up in.  
  
For the most part, the present conformed to memory. The lawn was still a mess of half-dead grass and half-functional sprinklers. The windows still had the same too-old screens that fell out every other time you opened them. The street number nailed next to the doorframe still had a loose nail in the '3' that made it tip diagonal.  
  
At the same time, the subtle differences almost stood out more for being so subtle, in an uncanny sort of way. There was a new coat of paint on the walls and trim. Same neutral colors, just fresher, more solid. There were new curtains hanging in the living room window, tasteful and inoffensive. The steps up to the porch had been replaced and reinforced, set on either side by solar powered lawn lights.  
  
Taylor fought the urge to flip up the hood of her Brockton U hoodie. She almost went to tug at the sleeves instead, but she'd long since cut those off of it. She pulled her backpack up her bare arm and onto one shoulder, hoisted her gym bag with her other hand, and started for the door.  
  
Hardly ten seconds after she'd knocked, the door swung open.  
  
Her dad looked much the same as the house. Still balding, still stubble-jawed, still on the lanky side of tall, but he'd cleaned up his cut, gotten a few soft patches of grey in his burgeoning beard, and there was just a little bit of healthy weight hidden under his union team-building exercise t-shirt.  
  
He smiled, and that uncanny feeling tickled the back of her mind, but she pushed it away.  
  
"Hey Taylor."  
  
"Hey dad."  
  
They communicated everything they needed to in those words and the deep hug that followed.  
  
He held her out at arm's length and looked her over. "Jesus, brat, this tall already? You only just got done with your first year of college, how many more inches do you need?"  
  
She laughed, and wasn't it nice to smile like this again? "Like you're one to talk."  
  
He grinned and closed the door behind her, then led her down the hall, talking over his shoulder. "Well, we just scarfed down lunch, so you're right on time to help us with the dishes."  
  
"What, too old now to do them yourself?"  
  
He laughed and pretended to fail at flexing. "Woe is me, it's true. I've gone frail and feeble in the twilight years that are my forties."  
  
Taylor was working up her best indignant scoff when they came to the end of the hall and the mood lodged in her throat.  
  
There in the kitchen, wearing a decidedly fashionable powder blue button-up and chinos, stacking a pair of empty plates on the dining table, was her dad's new husband.  
  
Derek.  
  
"Oh honey," her dad bemoaned. "My own daughter thinks I've gotten old already!"  
  
Derek smiled good-naturedly. "You're hardly even middle aged, babe, don't worry. You're a fu- freaking silver fox. Hey, Taylor!"  
  
Without warning he dragged her into an embrace, smothering her face in his short, faux-messy coif. She just barely managed not to let her recently-developed jiu-jitsu instincts kick in.  
  
He pulled back as suddenly as he'd attacked, squeezing her biceps. "Whoa there, kiddo! I knew you'd been doing track back at Winslow, but where'd you get these guns?"  
  
She flexed hard enough to get him to let go. "A friend of mine got me into MMA." _So don't test my reflexes,_ she thought. When his smile stayed strong, undeterred by her tone, she realized she was being unreasonable. _On second thought,_ do _test them. Let's see what happens._  
  
He only turned away from her when her dad sidled up to him. He looked down at Danny's mouth and his smile turned wry. "Whoops. Looks like your crumbcatcher got a few hostages there, love."  
  
Her dad's lip twitched near where the crumbs were, dislodging some but not all. "Oh, so it has." He wrapped his arms around Derek, mock casual. "Hm. Would you mind doing a favor for old man Hebert, Gladly?"  
  
Derek played along, looking sickeningly kittenish. "Oh, gladly, Hebert."  
  
Then her dad and her old high school English teacher sucked each other's faces.  
  
Overcome with a sudden bout of hydrocephalitic aches, Taylor banged her head against the wall to relieve the pressure.  
  


\--+--

  
"I'm fine Dad, I just tripped."  
  
When she was good and settled on the couch, her dad kissed her on the forehead and stopped looming over her. "Helluva trip, brat. There's some books on the endtable by your head, you know where all the food is. I'm gonna hit the store for a bit, so call my cell if you want something in particular." With that he smiled, denting the soft grey patches in his stubble, and strode out the door. A moment later his truck was rumbling down the street.  
  
Taylor reached up above and past her head, groping for paperbacks. Her hand found the thickest among the stack and held it in front of her aching face, careful not to let it fall on her swollen cheek.  
  
 _Milton, huh? Not bad, dad._  
  
She'd just gotten to the introduction of the Attendant Spirit when the sound of dishes being racked stopped and the sound of the dishwasher chugging with soap began. Like a rodeo clown popping out of a barrel Derek poked his head in from the kitchen.  
  
"Oh hey, kiddo!" His twunkish body followed his swollen head into the living room. He burst her personal space bubble as though he'd already earned the right and blocked her light in the process. His eyes telescoped onto her cheek and his thin lips pursed into a thinner grimace. "Dang, that bruise is looking pretty nasty. If you want, I can go getcha an ice pack from the freezer. How's that?"  
  
"No thanks," she grunted, trying to angle her book into the gap in shadows between his superego and reality.  
  
"Hey, no prob." His spine twisted, serpentine, so he could leer at her book too. She had no idea how he could read any of it with his dense skull between it and the ceiling lamp. "Oho, Milton, huh? You know, every time I try to get my students to read Paradise Lost they look at the size of it and say, no way José." He showed her his fangs. "Glad to see there's still some kids out there that appreciate the classics."  
  
As Lot fleeing Sodom, Taylor willed her eyes straight ahead into the pages. As brimstone and fire upon Gomorrah, Derek scooched her legs up so he could sit on the other end of the couch, perfectly casual. She thought it a perfect pose for him to stay in. Forever, even. As a lounging lump of salt, perhaps.  
  
"Mind if I watch some teevee with you for a bit?"  
  
Mindless of page numbers, Taylor snapped her book closed. She stomped into the hall and up the stairs, and when he called, "Parks and Rec reruns!" she didn't look back.  
  


\--+--

  
Taylor woke in the middle of the night to muffled noise coming from down the hall. Blearily, she tried to focus, listening for anything that might point to home invasion.  
  
Impacts. Rhythmic, steady, sharp. Wood on something. Almost clapping.  
  
Her hand crept toward the lamp on her bedside table; the base would be heavy enough to rattle a skull pretty handily.  
  
Crumbs of speech swept in under her door and she listened close.  
  
" _...stealing food from the fridge in the teachers' lounge… school board will make a decision… have to say for yourself?_ "  
  
The impacts came again, and with them high, muffled yelps. Too late, Taylor's mind pieced together the sound of a ruler against skin.  
  
She bashed her face against her pillow, but it failed to provide any brain damage. Defeated and scarred, she turned her bedroom fan on high and threw the comforter over her head.  
  


\--+--

  
Morning came too soon, and with it came a sour spite for imperial measurement. Taylor staggered into the kitchen barefoot and bedraggled, prioritizing throwing grounds into the coffee machine and bacon in the pan over brushing her rat's nest back to order.  
  
She'd only just sat down with her breakfast, smothering the night before in grease and caffeine, when she heard the click of her dad's door opening upstairs.  
  
He ambled down to the kitchen as Adam in Eden, though thankfully less naked. Less thankfully, the shirt left untucked over his boxers was a decidedly fashionable powder blue, and rather wrinkled too. His stubble had grown scruffier still overnight, his gait was likable to a stoner in a wave pool, and unless it was a trick of the dawn's light he was actually, literally glowing.  
  
"Morning, brat." He smiled at her and she pulled up an online article about pod people on her phone. Oblivious, he nabbed a bowl of heart-healthy bran cereal and grabbed milk for it from the fridge, wholly snubbing the half-empty pack of bacon still left.  
  
"Since when have you forsaken bacon?" she asked, reading his beatific mug for any inhuman tells.  
  
He joined her at the table, stirring his bran into brown mush. He downed a spoonful before answering. "Mm. Derek got me into the stuff, actually. Missed the bacon at first, and the eggs too, but only until I realized I felt a lot better during the day with this health gunk in my gullet."  
  
She rolled her eyes and closed the tab on pod people. _More for me_ , she thought, gnawing on another piece and searching the web for the degradation rate of taste buds. "Should've guessed."  
  
He cocked a brow but kept eating. After a particularly thoughtful chew he ventured, "What's going on with you and him? Is it… the teacher thing?"  
  
She very pointedly did not think about rulers. "It's not that. Or, it's not that specifically." She put her phone down, her eyes drawn into the black swirl in her coffee mug. "I don't see him as a teacher anymore, but I think he still sees me as a fifteen year old kid. He always had this weird need to be liked by students, and I don't think he knows how to handle me as an adult."  
  
Her dad hummed, pursing his lips. "If you're an adult already, does that mean you'll start paying rent?"  
  
She knew he was joking, but she wasn't in the mood. She glowered and scarfed down the last of her bacon.  
  
He sighed and let his spoon drop into the bowl with a clink. "You remember when your cousin Ryan first shacked up with that wife of his?"  
  
She did; the starving artist with the trust fund. "Yeah. Why?"  
  
"First family get-togethers she came to, she stuck out like a sore thumb. Tried to commiserate with a family of dockworkers about being working class while her shoes were worth more than most of us had in checking. But," he said, leaning in, planting a hand on the table for emphasis. "We put up with it. We let him keep bringing her and we gave her a place at the table. Why? Because for all the ignorance and awkwardness, we knew deep down she was just trying to be friendly. Because she wanted to get along with us, for Ryan's sake. And most importantly, because she made him happy." He sat back and spooned soggy bran into his fuzzy muzzle. "That's all you can ask for, sometimes."  
  
Taylor glowered into her coffee a moment more, then deflated. "Fine. I'll give him a shot. He's a complete and utter doofus, and I'm not gonna go mini-golfing with him or anything, but…" She frowned "It's not hard to see that he's been good for you. Somehow." She looked up at him, mustering half a glare. "But you have to make him stop with the 'kiddo' shit."  
  
Her father smirked. "I'll see what I can do." He got up and rinsed his bowl and spoon in the sink. He started for the stairs, but not before ruffling her curls. He chuckled at her indignant squawk. "Have a good run sweetheart."  
  
And with that he was gone, and Taylor was left alone to sulk in the ramifications of promising to make nice. She wondered not unseriously if he hadn't slipped some Baileys in her coffee when she wasn't looking to make her more pliable. If not, she'd have to contend with the fact that she was still a bit susceptible to the mesmer of Dad-juju.  
  
A knock at the door interrupted her self-administered sobriety tests. Her finger dropped from her nose and her straight line veered through the living room. She twisted the door handle, fully expecting to find Derek offering her a crumpled one and some quarters with one hand while the other guided her eye to an ice cream truck.  
  
Instead she found Sophia Hess, stanced up with her body angled, sporting a crop tank and running shorts with Adidas stripes, as well as a thin sheen of mid-workout sweat. Her straightened bob was cut almost as sharp as the razor's edge of her gaze.  
  
Taylor's right arm came up to block the opening swing before it even came. Surprise beat instinct, though, and her casual stance failed to support her otherwise steady counter. A follow-up leg sweep stole the last of her balance and she fell back onto her ass with a thump.  
  
Not one to forsake an opportunity, Sophia leapt atop her would-be prey, angling to pin Taylor's shoulders with her own body and twist her arm into impotence between them. Sweat dripped from the bridge of her nose down onto Taylor's cheek.  
  
She eyed the blooming bruise and grunted between huffs. "Should I be jealous?"  
  
Taylor responded by slipping her leg up between them to break the pin. Like a wrangler mounting a wild horse she swung Sophia to the ground with her lower body until she was straddling her. When toned bare arms came up to swing for her jaw she caught them and pinned them over Sophia's head. It held for the count of one, two, three, but the girl under her refused to stop struggling. Faces inches apart, Taylor let out a heavy breath.  
  
"Thank god you're here."  
  
Sophia lurched, trying to get her shoulder off the floorboards, but found herself soundly flattened once more. "Fuck you," she spat.  
  
Taylor captured her lips in an intense kiss, all teeth grazing flesh and tongues warring for dominance. Just when Sophia started to really get worked up, Taylor pulled away, just far enough that she couldn't arch up to keep going just yet.  
  
That didn't stop her from trying, of course.  
  
"Wait your turn, bitch."  
  
Sophia's lips twitched in the telltale sign of an eager grin suppressed. "Whatever," she ground out, only now going limp to save energy for when the tables would turn.  
  
 _Finally_ , Taylor thought, dragging Sophia up the stairs in a headlock. _Someone in my life who makes_ sense.


	8. Troubleshooting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CCup 5 match entry  
> Prompt: Sophia // Blasto // Cyberpunk // Hesitant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won CCup 5! I'll be posting my match entries here. I may go back and edit in stuff I cut for word count, but I'll probably just post 'em as submitted.

Sophia reached for the door's control panel, then paused.

Something was wrong.

She made sure she was alone in the dark stairwell and gave herself a pat-down. Her bodysuit hadn't bunched up anywhere. Her gloves and boots were snug. Her protective vest wasn't restricting movement. The elastic straps holding her weapons flush with her forearms and thighs remained secure.

Her portable diffuser cloak wasn't fully functional, but that wasn't anything new. It still masked 94% of her, leaving only a vague silhouette, a Sophia-shaped wisp of smoke. It was working without flickering, and she couldn't feel it overheating where it was strapped to her back.

So why were her instincts locking her in place?

The security, she realized. She hadn't run into any cameras or drones on her way to the top floor. For a building secretly owned by Toybox Industries, it was eminently accessible. She hadn't even used her skeleton cards yet. That could mean her client's intel was crap and this wasn't the place, but it could also mean the real barriers were concentrated closer to her target, making her job harder. She knew which was more likely.

Walking away wasn't an option. For one, an underworld reputation was still a reputation, and she had one to uphold. For another, after this bounty she could afford a black market phaser implant. The idea of letting some back alley arms master cut her open made her skin crawl but she could deal with that later.

Above all, she wouldn't back down because she was a survivor, and no one survived outside the corporate superstructures by wavering when things got risky.

She brought her ear to the door, careful not to lean on it. Her breathing slowed. She strained to catch the hum of aerial drone lifters, the faint hiss of sliding doors, or the tap, tap, tap of footsteps.

Instead, she saw a violet glow seep in from under the door. The color soaked the floor around her feet, first from the right side, then the left. It made a short, rhythmic flapping sound as it passed.

She'd never heard that from a drone, but her quarry was supposedly a neurotic recluse, so anomalies weren't too surprising. After thirty seconds she activated the door controls and slipped through.

A long hallway stretched forward from the stairwell door. White tiles matched white walls, but the lights were on a power-saver setting, leaving the area dim. Doorways lined the walls, some closed, some open, until the hall reached an L corner and turned right.

The first door on the left was open, revealing rows of server cabinets. Violet light lingered on the far wall, its source out of view.

Sophia crept past, one hand by her thigh, the other pointing upwards, wrist straight, fingers curled into a loose fist. Of the rooms with open doors, none seemed to be occupied. Most were storage: transparent component drawers, microtool racks, sealed steel drums.

She was halfway down the hall when another glow appeared, this one coming from around the corner. Orange, far more intense than the violet. Coming closer.

Click. Clack. Click.

She dashed into the nearest open room, stopped just past the doorway and fell into a crouch behind it.

The clicking reached the corner, then stopped.

The room held rows of stainless steel shelves. Squat off-white cylinders filled every shelf, blocking the light and casting shadows in the gaps between shelves.

The clicking started again, but now it was moving away, back the way it had come.

Sophia brought an arm up again, wrist stiff. When her pointer finger extended, wires worked into her glove and sleeve lined up, closing a circuit and feeding power to the narrow barrel on her forearm. Her thumb drew up, perpendicular to her finger, and a two-inch disruptor bolt slotted into the chamber. She rose from the crouch-

-and heard footsteps behind her.

She whipped around and fired, curling her pointer finger in, but her target was too short. It ducked behind the shelves, a blur of harlequin green.

She gave chase, loading another round.

It was already around the far corner, poking its glowing head out. The only parts of its body that weren't green were its eyes, big black circles that took up half the face, one cracked. Its head shifted around like it was struggling to get a good look at her.

She fired and it brought its arms up to block. The bolt discharged with a burst of sparks, ineffectual. It scampered away.

She moved parallel, trying to catch it between rows. Its agility made it hard to keep up with, and often it was all she could do to track the movement of its narrow tail. She came to a stop at the end of the middle row, using the shelves for cover. This time she held both arms up, loading both barrels.

Seconds stretched by. Discipline kept her breaths even, steady.

Tap, tap-

She lunged into the monkey's path. It made a mad dash for the door behind her, a cylinder under one arm.

She fired once, at its body.

It brought its free hand down.

Her second shot hit it square in the good eye.

The thing came undone, its green body dispersing in a flash. Silvery liquid splashed to the floor. Another cylinder lay inert in the thin puddle, near the ocular sensors. The one it had been carrying rolled towards her.

She stopped it with her foot and picked it up. Blood red text in blocky font read:

SEED-0391 | Model C | V 5.8.2

PROPERTY OF TOYBOX

A hard light shell, some conductive gallium compound for power distribution, exposed sensors and one of these SEEDs for a core. It only seemed to have the one weak point, but its actions hadn't reflected that. Imperfect. Anomalous.

The clicking returned.

She put the SEED down.

The thing paused at the corner, then turned and headed back.

She slipped out of the room in a half crouch, approaching the corner of the hall just as the glow began to fade. Up close, she saw long gouges in the tile, some narrow, some jagged, all in parallel groupings of five. The surrounding area looked whiter than the rest of the floor, like it had been cleaned more recently.

She bit the inside of her cheek, reminding herself what was at stake. With a phaser implant she could get into any building, dodge any weapon without a current, and take on the biggest bounties available. That wasn't an opportunity she could pass up.

She reloaded and turned the corner.

A great blaze-orange tiger stalked its way toward the end of the hall. Wide shoulders rose four feet off the ground, imitated musculature shifting. Thick, powerful paws moved slow, languid, quiet save for the percussive clicks.

When its hind paws lifted up, she could just barely see its mismatched claws, some larger than others, one or two serrated. All exposed metal.

She lowered her thumb, disarming the bolt, and drew the stun batons at her thighs. Breath held, she closed the gap between herself and the apex predator.

They were near the end when she got within a couple feet of it. Surprise was her only advantage and she'd lose it if she waited. She gave the tail as wide a berth as she could and positioned her baton, ready to thrust it at a back paw when it landed.

A front paw came down with a loud click, and this close, she felt the vibrations it created in her feet.

When the tiger reared its massive form around and swiped at her chest, she realized it could feel them too.

The blow knocked her onto her back. Her cloaking module flickered and failed. Her batons clattered to the ground, grip loosened by pain.

A claw came down.

She rolled to one side on instinct, putting pressure on her ribcage. She cried out, scrabbling for her batons.

Another claw forced her to withdraw her arms. It crushed the batons, trapping her between its front legs. Nowhere to roll. Its jaw stretched wide, maw bright like a roaring fire, lowering to swallow her face and crush her skull.

She held her open palm flat. Her other hand caught the bolt as it was ejected and, in one last, desperate effort, brought it up over her shoulder and jabbed it in the direction of the claws.

Searing color burst in a blinding flash before some heavy liquid and a small object fell onto her.

Her hand rose to her chest, and she sighed in relief. Five long cuts in the thick material of her vest, none reaching her skin. When she sat up the SEED on her stomach fell into her lap. She held it up and grinned at it.

"Top of the food chain, bitch."

She tossed it aside and got up, wiping liquid metal off herself.

At the end of the hall, there was a door on the right. This one actually had a security panel, with multi-factor authentication on top of a card slot.

She wasn't worried. She took a card from a pouch at her hip and slid it in. Nothing could stand up to the 0:pn_5354m.3.

The door slid open.

A scrap heap sat on one side of the lab. A myriad of parts, from sensors to tools to outright weapons, all arranged in a haphazard pile.

On the other side, mechanical arms carried SEEDs to shallow basins of liquid metal, depositing them along with one or two scrap components. Active SEEDs drew everything into different shapes and positions, then began to slowly, gradually weave light around themselves, like neon cocoons over silver skeletons.

Dr. Rey Andino sat in the middle.

His desk was simple, utilitarian stainless steel. His bodysuit was visibly unwashed and he wore nothing else. He typed furiously on a computer, fingers raw and red at the tips. His eyes were both bloodshot and lifeless, glued to the display.

She walked up to him, hands at her sides.

Just as cables connected his computer to equipment around the room, a multitude of tubes connected him to ports in the walls. Two tubes entered his mouth at the corners. Two more emerged from the nether regions of his suit, both mercifully opaque.

The last jumble of cables connected to the smooth helmet-like device that subsumed most of his head. Bolts lined a circle around the widest part of his skull and the skin around the edges was stretched taut. It was the same bone-white as the SEEDs. Red lettering over his forehead proclaimed:

PROPERTY OF TOYBOX

He didn't blink when she aimed at his face point blank. Front and middle finger, thumb up. A lethal bolt in the chamber. Drool dribbled down his chin.

She frowned. This was a far cry from some upstart exec begging for mercy while she pretended to listen. He wouldn't run, he wouldn't fight. He was barely there at all, less alive than the constructs. Hardly sporting.

But she had a job to do.

Her fingers curled inward.

* * *

She lingered at the landing, looking back through the open door.

The violet glow had belonged to a flying construct. One bolt had reduced a bird of prey to junk parts in a puddle. Like the others, it hadn't understood which parts of itself needed protecting.

She could keep waiting on the implant, she realized. Maybe another week, maybe longer. She was still damn good, with or without fancy, invasive tech.

The door slid shut behind her, leaving the stairwell dark. She took the steps two at a time.

Hell, with another job like this she could buy a real live plant instead.


	9. Shiner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CCup 5 match entry  
> Prompt: Tattletale // Circus // Mundane // Sore

The place was washed a pleasant white by unwavering LED bulbs and Sarah was miserable.

The dining hall bustled with students, lines stretching from the service windows to the doors. Friend groups and mini cliques huddled around the bigger tables, from sorority-wannabes to STEM nerds to artsy fartsy types, each pack insular in their closeness.

Not much different from her old high school's cafeteria after all.

She wiped a smudge off her glasses with the hem of her BBU pullover and frowned. This was supposed to be her chance to leave it all behind and here she was, lugging her stupid baggage around anyway. For someone who was supposed to be so clever, her big plan had gone awry pretty fast.

But then, she'd never been good at letting things go.

A pale bleach-blond mop caught her wandering eye. She stared for a moment, brow furrowing, then put her glasses back on and dipped out of line.

The outfit was as new as it was garish. Indigo booties with four-inch heels. Wine red skinnies showing off wiry legs. An off-white tunic hanging in loose layers. A purple paisley cardigan that draped down to the shins.

They looked up as she approached their two-person table by the window. The last couple years had changed more than just their wardrobe. Their hair was longer now, dyed blue at the tips, and well-applied makeup complicated the color palette. Light peach lips thinned. Grey eyes went cold, one lid a bold red, the other a swollen, sour purple. A bruise, and a nasty one at that.

Their fork hovered between mouth and plate, speared with a limp piece of chicken. "Sarah."

"Hey Alex. Got room for one more?" She nodded toward the empty chair.

"Depends. You still fishing for secrets? 'Cause I'm not taking the bait anymore."

She sat down, forcing herself to smirk. "Good to see you too. I've been well, how about yourself?"

Their glare wavered, less chastened than subdued. "Fine. Sit if you want, but start poking and prodding again and I'm gone."

"Nothing invasive. Just catching up." She leaned forward, arms folded on the table. "Haven't run into you since you graduated. I assume this _new you_ thing I'm seeing had something to do with it?"

They rolled their eyes and popped a bite into their mouth. "Why do you think I chose BBU? Two day drive, crap business program, no big legacy. Wouldn't be surprised if I was the only one from that bougie cesspool to end up here here."

"Until me."

"Yeah. Until you." They pointed the fork at her. "What are you doing here, anyway? Thought your parents wanted you to go Ivy. Tryna get away?"

"I told them I'd come here for now and do grad school at Brown or something." She hadn't had the test scores to get into any big name schools, even with all the cheating, but she wasn't about to tell them that. "How'd you get that shiner?"

They took their time chewing. "Practice. Fucked up a somersault, hit my head on one of the bars."

"Mm. Must've been a tough bar. One with swastika tats, maybe?"

A long, slow sip of iced tea. A moment stirring up buttered noodles on the plate. Their eyes never left hers. "Maybe."

"Must've been tough, dealing with that on your own. Without Rex around to defend you, like he did when you got shit for doing gymnastics."

Their fork scraped against the plate loudly, making her flinch. "And there it is. You can't fucking help yourself, can you?" Their chair squealed on the tile as they pushed away.

She mirrored them, rising. "You're still so weirdly defensive when I bring him up. Know what that tells me?"

"That we're done here? 'Cause that's what I'm hearing." They turned to leave.

She trailed them, haunting their peripheral as they dumped their half-eaten meal and offloaded dishes onto the 'dirty' rack. "Either you know something about why he did it that you're hiding from me-"

"Which I don't," they interjected, striding out the exit, trying to outpace her.

She followed them out into the crisp night air, almost jogging. She stumbled where pavement gave way to a dirt path and stopped to catch her balance. "-or you blame me for it and won't say it to my face, just like everyone else!"

Alex paused just before the corner of the building and craned their head back. "What?"

Her fists clenched at her sides. "I know it when I see it. You think I did something that made him off himself, or you think I knew what was fucking him up and didn't do anything about it. Everyone at school thought so. Mom and dad still do."

"Sarah, I- no."

She realized she was shouting, like a child, but she couldn't stem the tide. "I don't even care which one it is at this point, I just need to _know!_ "

They ran both hands through their hair, grimacing. "Okay, sure. I'll tell you."

She spread her hands. "Any minute now."

"Yeah." They started past the corner. "C'mon, I need to smoke anyway."

Confused, she followed them round the side of the building and over to a dimly lit area where trucks parked for unloading. Chatter from inside scattered on the salty bay breeze. The flickering glow from the nearby commercial district outlined dark silhouettes of other buildings at the campus' edge.

Alex rummaged in their cardigan's pockets for a lighter and a cigarette. It was only after they took their first pull and the smell hit her that she realized it was actually a joint.

"That bruise has got to hurt. Is that why you're smoking?"

"It helps." They leaned back against the wall, holding their next inhale for a good ten-Mississippi. "You know, it's kinda freaky how good you are at pushing people's buttons, when he tried so hard to avoid it. Not that it did him much good, but still."

"You're avoiding the question."

"You really wanna know why I get so defensive about him?"

"Yes?"

They closed their eyes. "I was in love with him."

The bite drained from her bark. "What?"

"Mmhm. So bad it hurt, even before…" They rolled their hand. "...everything."

Her voice wavered. "Did you ever, you know, tell him?"

"God, no. I wasn't ready to come out to anyone 'bout anything, especially not back then. Told myself I'd spill it all to him after graduation, but even then I knew it wasn't really possible."

"Wasn't it, though?"

They shot her a look.

"I mean…" She waved a hand over their hair, their makeup, their clothes.

"Nah. This ain't me jumping the gender fence, alright? I'm not even straddling it. I'm walking on top like it's a fucking tightrope. So no, we're not talking Will and Grace gay, but that don't mean straight neither."

"Still not impossible."

They turned their head away, leaning back, and took a long, deep pull. Gauzy smoke streamed out of their mouth and back into their nostrils.

"Either way, it's impossible now."

They tapped the joint. Ashes scattered on the ground.

Sarah folded her arms, leaning next to them. "Do you ever wonder if it would have gone different, if he'd known?"

"'Course I did, all the time. But it wasn't doing me any good. Couldn't keep distracting myself with what-ifs forever." They almost smirked. "He wouldn'a wanted us to."

Looking up at them, she noticed their cardigan was the same purple as the bruise. It struck her that the outfit was coordinated to compliment the injury, to integrate it.

Her gaze fell to her sneakers. "Growing up, I used to get hurt trying to keep up with him, playing with the hoop on the patio. Sprains, twisted ankles, stuff like that. One time I fell so hard he had to take me to urgent care, and my leg hurt for a week after. I asked him how he dealt with it, when he got roughed up in games or whatever, and he told me I had to just… sit with the pain. Let it in. Face it head-on, so that-"

"-So you can stop being afraid of it."

"Yeah."

"He told me the same thing." They went to take another pull, then paused. The light was gone.

"I'm starting to get what he meant, I think. Try and push past it and you'll just end up dragging it along with you."

They lowered the joint. "He was usually right."

She removed her glasses and stared past them, eyes stinging. "These aren't even real, you know. My vision is fine. It's just… I still feel like I have to put on an image, even when mom and dad are three states away. Even when I don't have any friends here to keep it up for. How pathetic is that?"

Their gaze met hers and lingered there. Wordless, they held out the lighter and joint.

After a moment, she put her glasses in the pocket of her pullover and took the offering. She coughed and coughed after her first pull. The second was smoother. She ashed it the way they had.

A gaggle of students left the building, releasing the smells from inside. Her stomach gurgled.

"Shit. I should get back in line."

Alex put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. "Don't bother, the food sucks. I only come here 'cause it's convenient." They turned away, talking as they walked. "Let's go somewhere that actually cooks their fucking chicken."

She caught up, falling in step. It was easier now. A slower pace, open air between them. Ahead, the warm halogen bulbs of side streets and restaurants lit the way forward.


	10. Benchmarks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CCup 5 match  
> Prompt: Sophia // Colin // Canon // Truculent

The blade cut an inch deep before faltering. The steel ingot now bore a narrow scratch on its surface, long and clean.

Not good enough.

Colin brought the blade back over to his desk, placing it in the nanotool workstation tray. Spindly mechanized limbs unfolded from the sides, opening panels to access unseen components.

Something blinked in his peripheral. A message notification. Dragon, likely berating him for spending another day off at the PHQ. She meant well, but his work was too important to procrastinate on. He'd respond later.

Connections on the chip that regulated system stability were faulty, but that was nothing new. He pulled up sims and data spreads.

Light glinted off his monitor. He reached for a weapon rack, then stopped as he looked out the window. No Lung or Purity, just the first snow of winter causing the forcefield to flare. Disappointed, he let his hand fall.

Simulations with current values had predicted better results. Unknown quantities at work; a typical hurdle for a Tinker. He moved the benchmarks and placed higher power priorities on rending functions.

Another notification, this time for an elevator coming up to the floor his workspace was on. That gave him pause; he was rarely interrupted unless a real fight broke out. He turned to face the door, waiting to see who it was.

It opened to reveal a teenager with dark skin and sharp features. She was an inch or two shorter than him but held herself like she was taller. Her jacket was just loose enough to theoretically conceal weapons and a disposable domino mask enhanced the severity of her gaze.

She stayed in the doorway and scanned the room without moving her head or letting him out of her sight. Paranoid, but it was a fine line between that and prepared. He respected that.

"You Armsmaster?"

He nodded. "Shadow Stalker, right? The new probationary Ward. Who sent you my way?"

She huffed. "Thought you'd know. Piggy's making me 'check in' with you guys."

"Right." There'd been a memo at some point, he remembered, some drivel about collective mentorship. A pointless chore. "Consider yourself checked in on, then."

She lingered at the threshold. "That all? Thought you were supposed to give me the 'scared straight' spiel or something."

"Would you have listened?"

The corners of her mouth twitched, but she schooled herself again. "They also said you were the one making my new crossbow bolt heads. The kiddie ones, with tranquilizers or whatever."

"Ah. About that." He turned to rummage through a drawer. "Those are finished. They'll be in the Ward equipment room with your new suit." He pulled out a container the size of a pencil case. "I have something different for you."

Her eyes flickered to the box, then back to him, wary. "What's next, a muzzle? Or maybe some-"

He opened it.

"...What the fuck is this?"

"Your track record is impressive. Your drive, too. Shortsighted in execution, but I can tell you understand just what we're facing down out there."

Within were a number of steel bolt heads. Mundane, but barbed and viciously sharp.

"Regulations are important, but war is war. Heroes need results more than oversight."

She crossed the room slowly, eyeing him, stopping just short of his reach. Her hand came up to take the container.

He snapped the lid shut, making her scowl. "Use these only when absolutely necessary. I don't want to hear about any low-level gang members showing up at Brockton General with one of these in their chest. And if you get caught with them, I'm not taking the fall. Got it?"

Her jaw worked but her mouth stayed shut. She nodded. When he handed it to her, she tucked it into her jacket.

Satisfied, he turned back to his desk. "That's all. Tell Piggot I okayed you for today."

He waited until his monitor showed the elevator descending, then picked up the blade. With the click of a switch, power thrummed in his hand. He brought it down upon the ingot.

"Fuck," he muttered.

Half an inch deep.

A step backwards. He replaced it on the tray and reviewed the data, wondering what he was missing.

* * *

Winter returned with a vengeance.

Falling snow smothered what was left of Earth Bet. Prefab homes brought over from Gimel sat flush with what older buildings were still intact, sharing warmth. Those capable worked together to maintain piping and collect firewood. Kids stupid enough to brave the cold threw snowballs at each other.

Sophia could see everything from her vantage point. If a real fight broke out, she'd be the first to know. A perk of keeping watch from the cab of an old air traffic control tower.

Security was the other big upside. The airport, like most of the city, was without electricity, which meant the cab was unreachable by elevator. Impossible to access now, without powers.

Her phone stopped vibrating. It went still on the desk, next to the bulky portable charger it was linked to. Snow-laden clouds meant no sunlight, and no sunlight meant no way to charge the charger. If she was smart she'd shut the phone off.

Once she was done whittling, she decided, leaning forward in her chair.

Most of her bolts needed new heads already. The shafts were intact, owing to their resilient materials, but the original heads were not. Tinkertech fell apart if it wasn't cared for. Steel warped and bent with repeated impacts. She had run out of both last week.

Carving sticks down to points took a while, as did fitting the other side to the hollow end of a bolt, but there wasn't much else she could do. She was getting a feel for what woods were easiest to work with, at least.

The one in her hand snapped in half.

"Fuck," she muttered.

Not that wood, then.

When she turned to grab a different stick, she caught motion out the window and swiveled fully around.

An aircraft, quite fast, headed right for her. One she recognized.

She rose from her chair, switched her hand-crank lantern off and took up position in the gloom.

The craft flew overhead and didn't pass by on the other side. Something landed on the roof, near the far side of the cab. Displaced snow fell from the edge, just past the window. More fell into the room when the access panel clicked and came open.

A man in forest green power armor dropped through with a heavy thud. A small bullseye adorned one arm. No visible weapons, but lots of places to hide some.

Her crossbow was already pointed at his chest. Her finger hovered between the guard and the trigger. "Not an inch closer."

He tensed but put up his hands, deferent. "Shadow Stalker. I'm not here to fight."

"Forgive me if I don't take that at face value."

"That's… fair."

"What did you come here for?"

"We knew you were operating out of here." He looked around the dim room, at her desk, her cot, her pile of individually wrapped rations. "I hadn't thought you'd be living here too. It's concerning."

"Get to the point, Armsy. Or whatever you're calling yourself now."

His jaw set and his words staggered out slow, weighted. "First, I want to apologize. Back when you were still a Ward, I had the opportunity to give you guidance and assistance, and I failed." He paused. "In a lot of ways."

She adjusted her grip on her weapon. The stock dug into her shoulder. "You're wasting your time here. Don't need any of your boo hoos and so sorries, so if that's all this is then you have my permission to fuck off."

"I didn't just come here for me, actually."

"Same goes for Dragon. I don't need it from anyone."

"Your mother asked the Wardens to reach out to you."

She fired, aiming an inch away from his torso. The bolt whizzed past him in shadow state, then materialized and clattered against a defunct control panel.

He frowned but didn't flinch.

Her hands worked on muscle memory, loading another pointless bolt into the firing groove.

His hands stayed up. "According to phone logs she's been trying to reach you since the cell network went up. Making twice as many calls recently, since the weather turned."

"Hadn't noticed," she lied.

"She asked us to tell you she and your siblings have an apartment on Gimel, and that you're welcome there. I don't know what was said when you were incarcerated, but I know she'd rather you were in a home with people who care about you than… this."

Her fingers clenched tight around her weapon. "Yeah, well, it's not her fucking decision. Or yours."

"No." His posture relaxed, arms dropping. "No, you're right. It isn't."

He reached out, up toward the open access panel, and a cable dropped through. He put one foot in the stirrup at the end and grabbed hold of another at shoulder height. "It's your call to make, Sophia." He tugged and the cable went taut, lifting him off the floor. "You know what you need to do. Stop hiding from it."

Her sights tracked him as he rose, stayed aimed at the hatch as the aircraft disappeared into the distance. Something buzzed behind her and she whirled, leveling her weapon.

Her phone, vibrating.

Her finger hovered between guard and trigger. Wind whistled low through the hatch.

The call went to voicemail.

"Fuck," she whispered, voice faltering. "Fucking fuck this. _Fuck._ "

No point in closing the hatch first. The snow had already gotten in, and with it the cold.

She put down the crossbow and picked up the phone.


	11. The Stitcher and the Shade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CCup 5 final match  
> Prompt: Grue // Bonesaw // Journey // Hallowed

"I seek the devil's stitcher."

The hollow echo of his voice seemed to unsettle the farmer, whose grip on his sickle tightened and whose eyes flickered to the curtained windows of the carriage.

The man in the cloak expected this. His was a grim presence: a large, looming figure sat upon a hearse with no horse, shrouded in black, eerily still. With the midday sun overhead his hood would cast his face in shadow, obscuring all but the faintest impression of a pale skull beneath.

"My pursuit is of her alone," he assured. "I mean you and yours no harm."

"She was here," said the farmer, who chose to raise his voice rather than approach the road. "Last night. We just buried what was left of the local alchemist and his wife."

He was close, then. "I assume someone saw which path she took to leave."

A curt nod. "Same one you're on. Southbound."

"Did she bring anything with her?"

"The alchemist's vials. Some livestock." His jaw set. "The alchemist's daughter."

"My thanks." He turned to face the road. Darkness poured out from beneath the carriage's curtains like heavy smoke.

"Trinity forgive me," the farmer muttered. "Wait!"

The dark went still and the man looked back.

"I've heard it said your kind enlist lost souls. Take command of the restless dead."

"Among other duties, yes."

"I've no illusions about the fate of the girl," he said, eyes hard. "Your very existence is blasphemy, but I'd rather she bore your yoke than the devil's."

"The stitcher is my priority," he said, "but I will collect the girl if I can."

The smoke stirred, wreathing the wheels. They turned and the hearse stirred into motion, southbound.

* * *

A small chapel cemetery sat at the end of the road.

He stepped down from the hearse and approached.

A covered wagon lay overturned before the low wooden fence, harness empty, contents spilled. Bulging sacks, corked vials, spools of surgical suture. Wet soil caught the moonlight and traced a glistening path through the lychgate into the consecrated grounds beyond.

He offered a quick, silent prayer to his patron, then crossed the threshold.

Fallen monstrosities littered the cemetery, some with more limbs than teeth, others with skin flaps like bat wings, each sprawled limp and covered in weeping cuts. The earth beneath was damp and dark.

The stitcher stood at the bottom of the shallow slope, past the last gravestones. She was taller than he remembered her, older, but still wore the same tattered dress and tarnished apron. Patches of added cloth meant the seams hadn't split, but her longer arms and legs jutted out awkwardly from the sleeves and hem. She lingered before an unmarked mound of disturbed dirt, her back to him.

"Stitcher."

She turned around, revealing the small creature in her arms. Goat legs, split from joint to cloven hoof so that four became eight, arranged to resemble a spider's legs. A child's head for a thorax, mouth stapled into a wide grimace. A pair of small arms in front like pincers, drawing clear fluid from a vial into a syringe.

She smiled. "Hello. I was hoping one of you might come by."

He descended slowly, stepping over corpses, drawing smoky black spectres from the people they had once been. "Your monsters are dead."

"Most of them, yes." She pet the grotesque spider's head gently.

The spirits writhed beneath his cloak, eager to get closer and exercise the agency she'd taken away. "Your road has come to an end."

She made no move to flee. "It has."

He stopped just out of her reach. "Your keeper has turned on you and left you alone."

"Hm. Not quite."

The mound of dirt stirred and she stepped aside. A body rose up from beneath and settled atop it, spat out as water would reject oil.

He was filthy with gore and grime, though his skin was unmarked. A wicked pair of horns twisted out of his forehead. His slitted eyes were unfocused and unseeing, his sharp teeth were bared in a rigid grin, and his favored hunting knife was lodged in his throat.

The spider dropped from her arms and skittered onto the devil's stomach. The child's hands stabbed the syringe into his chest and pushed the plunger partway down, subduing his sporadic twitching.

The stitcher's smile grew tight. "He refuses to stay gone. I thought I might be able to bury him in consecrated soil, but I suppose I've well earned the Trinity's scorn." She looked up at him. "Would it be too much to hope I've not earned yours, shade?"

He lowered his hood, revealing a face with strong features, pale eyes, and dark skin marked with the white image of a skull. Scar tissue lined his jaw and ran down the middle of his throat, continuing beneath his clothes.

"Drat," she said. "Figures."

"You remember me."

"I try to remember the ones I did the most work on. You…" She shook her head. "It's kind of funny, actually. He told me to leave you for dead. Now here he is, and here you are."

Shadows curled his hands into fists. "Do you remember us out of guilt or pride?"

"I'd be lying if I said it wasn't both, and lying is wrong."

"You speak as though you care what's right."

"I do try to be good, as much as I can be." She met his gaze. Despite her expression, the look in her eyes was hollow, tired. "Want to know why I made a deal with a devil?"

He said nothing.

"When I was six, he snuck into my home and cut up my parents for fun, tortured them to the brink of death. He said he would give me the power to save them if I agreed to serve him. I did, and suddenly I knew where to stitch to keep them alive. Want to know the first thing he ordered me to do?"

Past her, the devil's thin lips twitched.

Her smile broke, and suddenly she looked very young and very small, in spite of the viscera that coated her apron. "I had to pull out every stitch I'd made. With my bare hands."

The spider left the body and came to her feet. She picked it up and hugged it close.

"Your suffering doesn't erase your atrocities."

"He forced me to work if I didn't do it willingly, and he'd always do something worse. I only wanted to help."

"Good intentions pave the road to hell."

"But they last a long while too, and I could fix people instead, if I got the chance, and…" She paused, considering her words. "If the devil keeping me there is gone, maybe I could take that road back out?"

The mutilated spirits yearned to deny her the option. The darkest part of him, the one that at all times wheezed his last breath, broken and splayed open at her hands, wanted to do worse.

But he was beholden to his duties.

"The little girl," he said. "Can she be saved?"

"Not like this. Not anymore."

"Then let her go."

She squeezed her creation tighter, then nodded. She set it down, pet its head, took the syringe and slipped it beneath the base of its skull. It wobbled as the plunger bottomed out, then fell limp.

"There. It's- she's gone." The stitcher looked up at him, nervous and raw.

His fist came up and she flinched.

When he opened his palm, the roiling shadows of her victims poured over the devil's body, pooling around his form. He began to lower into the void, sinking slow like a gnarled branch into swamp muck.

"The way back will be long and hard," said the shade.

"I know."

The stitcher untied her apron and brought the strap over her head. The ruined fabric bundled in her fists, and for a moment it seemed she might try to tear it apart, but her grip relaxed and the garment fell.

"Part of you will always be there, in hell, no matter how far you get."

She looked at her bloodied hands. "I know."

The shadows took the last of the devil - his twitching fingers, his grinding teeth, his wide-open eyes - and then he was gone. The spirits dispersed, their purpose fulfilled, leaving the sanctified ground beneath unmarred.

With one hand the shade drew the spirit of the alchemist's daughter to him, and she settled beneath his cloak. With the other, he reached out to the stitcher.

"You will serve alongside me, as I serve my patron. The only terms are these: You will do no harm to the innocent. You will aid those in need. You will guide the lost to health and peace. Do you accept?"

She closed the distance and took his hand. The blood on hers sunk into her skin and stained it red, marked but clean. "With all that's left of me."

He smiled, small but genuine. "Then let us depart."


	12. Playing Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her situation at school is brought to light, Taylor gets sent to live with her estranged grandmother.  
> My other Give-A-Fic-A-Thon one-shot for 6thfloormadness on Cauldron

By the time they reached the farm, the sun was long gone.

In the stark, dispassionate glare of the truck’s headlights, the house looked like a standing corpse. Its stout and stalwart shape might have been a proud landmark once, but now, with decomposition creeping into the edges, in the peeling paint and the weathered wood slats and the chimney’s faded bricks, it seemed more a squatter’s second choice than something to call home.

The truck huffed and chuffed as Gram wheeled it off to the side. Her weathered hands moved with surprising agility, shifting into park, clicking off the lights, cutting the ignition and retrieving her cluttered keyring before Taylor had even unbuckled her seatbelt.

Gram had one boot in the dirt before she thought to look back at the mess in her passenger seat. When she spoke her tone was brusque, stiff like old pipes rattling in her chest. “C’mon.”

Taylor’s urge to talk back was rusty from disuse, so instead she just opened the passenger door and climbed down, hugging her overstuffed backpack close, lips pressed thin. It was dark enough out that she could only tell her curls were in her face by the way they tickled her cheeks, so when Gram started to walk away she had to follow by sound alone: first the rustle of denim through shin-high grass, then hollow thunking across the porch, until a latch clicked and a heavy door creaked open.

Gram flipped the light switch and hung her wheat-brown field jacket on a coat rack without breaking stride, but the baseball cap over her short grey hair stayed on. She moved through the house, pointing out rooms and doors as she went, giving Taylor little opportunity to ask questions or look around. “Livin’ room. Kitchen. Bathroom. Bedroom. Back door.”

A narrow set of stairs brought them to a dingy attic space cluttered with cardboard boxes, old furniture and cobwebs. The sloped gable ceiling almost reached the floor on both sides and made standing straight difficult in some spots. The only thing not covered in dust was a spartan bed set against the one wall with a window.

Finally, Gram turned to face her, and the look in her eyes put every teacher who’d ever tried to play hardass to shame. “You can move this all around in the morning, no makin’ a ruckus at night. I’ll call you down for meals, but if you miss one, you’re old enough to figure something out for yourself. I assume that father of yours taught you how to use a stove at least?”

Not for the first time, Taylor wondered how someone as wonderful as her mom had come from a home like this. Meeting the stare as best as she could, she nodded once.

“Good.” She turned back to the stairs, still talking. “Case worker got you a couple weeks off school and there’s no way in hell you’re touching the field ‘quipment, so if you get bored, pick up a broom.”

Five minutes later Taylor was lying on her back beneath a thick, coarse quilt, making a conscious effort to keep her jaw from clenching. Starlight spilled in from the window. Tinny chatter from an old TV set leaked through the floorboards. Dust seemed to linger in the air like a thin fog. This is your life is now, she told herself. This is where being a doormat gets you.

Out in the fields, a million specks of life fretted and churned.

☼

That night, she woke up panting.

Her eyes struggled to make sense of the dark, unfamiliar room. She backed up against the wall because someone wanted to stab her between the shoulder blades. She watched the secluded corners with wide eyes because there were stalkers in the shadows. Then, as consciousness returned in full, she let her head flop back down to the mattress, because there was no one there at all.

Except that wasn’t quite true. She felt a tugging in the back of her mind, a cluster of signals from her newest sense telling her she was under attack. It took her a moment to realize that, while she’d been sleeping, thousands of bugs had gathered around and under the house, and the ones under the porch were being killed off. Every few seconds another would get picked off the ground and be gone right after, and something bigger than any bug sent tiny tremors through the soil with each step. 

A single thought set a swarm upon the intruder, crawling over every inch of its body. The shape began to twitch and back away, squashing more insects as it panicked. If she really concentrated she could almost make out its shape, squat with a narrow tail and a long face, like a rat, or a possum.

A second thought put the stingers and fangs of her tiny soldiers to use.

☼

There were two chairs at the little table in the kitchen. One for Gram, who sat in the same chair every meal but only for the five minutes it took her to finish, and one for nobody, because Taylor opted to take her meals in the attic instead. Stale air and musty crates weren’t exactly five star dining atmosphere, but it beat being treated like an inconvenience.

She was still working through her hash browns when the front door swung open and closed, its impact felt through the whole structure. The low grumble of the tractor came and left, fading away into the fields.

Taylor took that as her cue. She’d had precious little time to practice with her new superpowers, and while she could close her eyes and make the termites in somebody’s walls march in circles if she wanted, there was no substitute for seeing them in action. She called, and the bugs she’d begun to collect beneath the house responded. The wasps and flies came first, buzzing up through the stairwell, followed by the spiders and beetles, and finally the earwigs and ants.

Even knowing she controlled them all completely, seeing so many insects flood into the room made her put down her fork. No more using powers while eating, she decided. Lesson learned.

She left her makeshift nook, a stool placed before a closed crate, so she could stand over her army and get a good look. The bugs here were different from the ones in Brockton, she noticed, with the flies being bigger and the wasps looking meaner and the spiders trending more towards the lithe and spindly. They responded to her commands the same as her bugs back home, though, and that was all that mattered.

She looked around the room, trying to find inspiration for how to test her capabilities, until her eyes landed on a dust rag. It was on an old desk she’d gotten halfway through cleaning up the day before.

Turning back to her troops, she picked out the most capable of the bunch and brought them scurrying up the desk to gather around the rag. Wasps and beetles pinched the edges in their mandibles and tugged with all their might, and much to her satisfaction began to drag it slowly across the surface, wiping dust up as they went. She was less enthused when she saw streaks left behind where the rag hadn’t been pressed down hard enough. She tried piling extra bugs atop the rag to weigh it down but that started to give her pulling team trouble, so she had to settle for a half-success.

It was the rest of the desk that really soured things for her. She tried maneuvering her wasps so that they could drag the rag up and down the sides, but that must have been too much to ask, as they only ended up dropping it again and again. Frustrated, she dismissed all of the bugs, sending them back to their shelter so she could finish the job herself.

Down below the house, miniature terraforming continued. Ants dug tunnels underground. Wasps built nests in the corners. Beetles gathered plants for the earwigs, tender grass shoots to eat and dead leaves to hide under. Spiders wove their webs.

The spiders were getting hungry, she realized. She’d been feeding them flies up until then, but there were fewer around here than the neighborhoods she’d gathered from before, and she wasn’t sure how her power use might be affecting the food supply of larger animals like lizards or bats.

As she pushed the rag along, it occurred to her that she’d never heard wasps talked about in terms of food chains and ecosystems. So, purely out of practicality, she decided to make good use of them. They stood stock still as the spiders wrapped them in silk, stoic as the digestive fluids of more important bugs ate them up from the inside. 

By the time she thought to put her dishes away, the sausage had gone cold.

☼

On the days Gram took her truck to market, Taylor got into the habit of taking walks around the property. She could only take so much of the creaking wood and looming walls. The farm was bigger than the radius of her range, so if she planned on going far she sent each faction of her little reserve out to a different spot.

Having lived in a city her whole life she was no stranger to walking, but tackling long distances on pavement hadn’t prepared her for the inconsistency of dirt paths and country roads. The first time she’d gone out she’d only managed to cross a quarter of the property. Before getting her powers she might have seen the difficulty as a good reason to hold off, but now she felt obligated to rise to the challenge, so she took the opportunity whenever it came around.

The farm itself wasn’t much to look at. Rows of lettuce, of collards, of potatoes and tomatoes and apple trees. Pleasant enough, but everything blurred together pretty quickly. She wondered what it said about her sorry state, that even her escape from boredom was boring.

It still beat being in school, but that was a thin comfort.

She was halfway down the property when she began to sense some odd new bugs within her range. They froze in place as she approached, many still mid-bite of one of Gram’s crops. Curious, she wandered afield to get some closer looks.

The first was a long, bulbous green-brown caterpillar with thin mottling and long, narrow stripes. It was halfway through a meal of corn husk, and if it weren’t messing up the plant she’d have been impressed with its appetite.

The second had her confused, because they were far too small to be spiders, and yet when she came upon the potato sprouts they were ravaging, it was covered in a thin, gauzy web of silk. Once she’d found a way to walk some out into view she saw little ruddy orange bodies like crossbreeds of spiders and ticks, like indecisive mimics.

She almost missed the third, thinking the white fuzz hidden in a growth on an apple tree to be some kind of mold. It was only when she directed one to wiggle its body around that she realized she was looking at a cluster of waxy white scale insects. They had made a home of the tree, and while they looked perfectly comfortable huddled up together, the tree itself was a twisted and distended thing, especially compared to the other trees in the same row.

She thought about feeding all of these pests to other bugs, but her larger spiders and beetles were too far away and she wasn’t sure which other bugs would predate on these ones to begin with. So instead, she sent as many as she could into the patches most suffused with pesticides and marched the rest as far from the crops as she could. Hopefully, that would be enough.

☼

A low, intermittent buzzing drew Taylor from sleep. At first she thought it was the bugs below the house responding to her REM sleep, but even when she gave an all-personnel order to shut up, the sound continued.

Her eyes shot open. Was this another new bug, she wondered, thoughts racing. One that wasn’t affected by her power, a possible blind spot for her control. She hurried to throw a coat over her pajamas and moved for the stairs, as quick as she could without making noise.

Her ears led her to the living room, where she found Gram conked out on the couch, head leaned against the decorative quilt draped over the back, limp form lit by a muted episode of the Ed Sullivan Show with the closed captions on. When her chest rose, the buzzing began, and when it fell, the buzzing stopped.

As frustrated as she was relieved, Taylor made to go back to her warm bed and continue her vacation from consciousness, but the sight of Gram’s unfurrowed brow and slackened jaw gave her pause. She realized this was the first time she’d seen her grandmother relax since she’d come to live here.

The next morning, things would be business as usual. Gram would inhale breakfast and get gone on her tractor and Taylor would hide away with hers, even with the house empty. Words would be as sparse as eye contact. But the fact would remain that, somehow, the quilt on the couch had draped itself over Gram as she’d snored.

☼

By the time she finished organizing the attic, she’d come to accept that bugs weren’t much good for cleaning. With such tiny, simple workers came a huge amount of limitations, but she was getting the hang of finding workarounds. She still couldn’t get them to dust certain surfaces, but she had managed to jerry-rig a spider broom, with the biggest beetles she had tugging on silk tethers, dragging the head of a pushbroom around the floor.

As they swept up the crumbs of her lunch, she reached into her backpack and brought a hefty hardcover textbook down on the desk. At first, she’d started studying just to stave off boredom, as she wasn’t optimistic about going back to classes, even at a new school. It was only once she cracked open her life sciences tome and found an extensive lesson plan on insects that she started to truly bury her nose in the pages.

Her power gave her a sense of the bugs she controlled, sure, but often it felt like she was only getting a driver’s understanding; it was easy to feel how this signal made that leg twitch, or make use of various sensory organs, but that didn’t mean she knew what everything looked like under the hood.

Reading about their bodies and behaviors gave her plenty of new tools to utilize. She learned the logic behind ant tunnel layouts and how to better construct her own. She learned how spiders process their food and what diets best enabled silk production. And today, she was learning about wasps.

Not everything in the book was relevant to her, of course, but it was at least interesting. There was more to wasps than she’d thought, and while they were primarily characterized by their powerful stingers, it wasn’t the end-all be-all of wasphood. While many wasps just scavenged fallen fruit and insect carrion for food, some species developed mutually dependent relationships to certain kinds of plants and trees. Many became meals themselves, feeding bee-eaters and honey buzzards. And some...

Some ate prey insects.

She moved her glasses up with one hand and rubbed the bridge of her nose with the other, trying not to scream in frustration. Then she rose and went to put on her sneakers, while under the house she gathered what few wasps she hadn’t already used as spider chow.

She had an ecosystem to fix.

☼

Repopulating sounded simple enough when she’d set first set out but in practice it entailed a lot of uncertainty. Every group of wasps she sent out was on their own as soon as they left her range, and she could only hope they weren’t killed or unable to find consistent food sources before they could start breeding again. She did her best to set them up close to pest-infested crops, but only time would tell.

Walking wasn’t much trouble now, at least. She’d gotten used to the dirt roads, figured out a way to put her weight down that accounted for the uneven ground so she wasn’t stomping on hard soil or tripping in loose dirt.

She was even starting to appreciate the atmosphere of the farm. Sure, each plot was just another set of rows, and each row was just more of the same plant, but she’d spent enough time figuring out the hidden wonders of her bugs to know that even the simplest of life forms were far more complex than they seemed. One time she’d stopped on one of her walks and just stared at a single head of cabbage, counting the folds of its leaves, tracing its veins and venules, until the sound of Gram’s truck pulling in had shaken her out of it.

This evening, just as she was doing the same to a tomato plant, something in her sixth sense caught her attention. Odd movements in the next plot over, big enough to be mammalian. Unable to get more from her power without just swarming them, she headed into the rows of pear trees.

Under one of the last trees in its row, whose bark was warped by a mealybug infestation, a pair of mangy possums were staring each other down, with just six feet and a fallen pear between them. The fruit itself was misshapen, no doubt a result of the infestation, but whenever one possum made to move towards it the other hissed and growled, keeping it at bay. Taylor got the impression that the issue was less the fruit itself and more that they were just too skittish to let the other get near.

She considered just getting rid of them, but she wasn’t certain they were actually bad for the crops, and she knew they were at least capable of eating pests. Plus, the last time she’d killed one, it had taken her bugs hours of disquieting work to get rid of the body afterward, and she really didn’t want to deal with that again.

So instead, while the possums played standoff, she snuck some of the wasps she was relocating in to slowly chew the pear clean down the middle. When they were done, beetles heaved-ho and pushed each half over to the squabblers, who finally took notice. Gradually, and with the occasional glare at their counterpart, they began to eat.

Satisfied, Taylor made her way back to the road, leaving only a small handful of wasps to take up residence in the malformed tree. The possums, all out of huff and fuss, seemed content to simply finish their treats in peace.

☼

“She’ll be gone soon as she’s eighteen, no doubt about it.”

Taylor, who was halfway down the stairs on her way to the bathroom, stopped in her tracks. Out of instinct first, because avoiding Gram was just habit at this point, and out of curiosity second. She crept down the last few steps and peeled her ears.

“It works just fine for me. She stays outta my way and I stay outta hers, and that’s all this needs to be.”

The voice was coming from the kitchen, which was a couple rooms over from the stairwell, so she had to strain to make out some of the words. She leaned out a bit to get a better angle.

“It’d be stupid to get attached. She’ll get into some big name college and get some big damn scholarships and she’ll stay gone ‘cause she won’t need me anymore.” This time, there was a slight shift in her tone. It was subtle, still terse and staid but with the edges dampened, not quite so hard. Like water flowing through a half-thawed pipe. “Same as Annie did.”

Then came the click of the house phone in the receiver, which Taylor took as her cue to sneak back up the stairs. She waited a minute or two, listening for signs that Gram had retired to her bedroom, then spent another five pondering that reaction.

What was she afraid of?

☼

That night, when she came down for dinner, Gram had made stew. It was a hearty, ruddy color, somewhere between red wine and tomato juice, and smelled strongly of garlic, onions and thyme. Gram poured herself a bowl, grabbed a beer from the fridge, set both on the table and dug in.

For a moment, Taylor stood in the doorway, just watching her eat. Took note of the way she seemed to savor the food and slowly sip her beer, how her gaze stuck to the salt and pepper shakers, the midpoint between both chairs. She wasn’t in as much of a hurry as she was with breakfast and lunch, and it occurred to Taylor that she might only be rushing like that when there’s still work to be done.

She felt ashamed for assuming the worse, but at the same time, the knowledge strengthened her resolve. She poured her own bowl, filled a cup from the cabinet with water, sat down in the other chair and began to eat.

The stew was good, but she hadn’t expected any less. All the vegetables were fresh from the farm, and the recipe boasted a richness and balance of flavors that spoke of many years of practice. Whatever gripes she had with living here, the cooking was never one of them.

When she looked up to reach for her water she noticed Gram staring at her as though startled, eyes wide, jaw just a bit slack. The hand holding her spoon had drooped, half-sunk into the bowl. Her expression was a lot less stony when she was caught off-guard.

Taylor feigned ignorance, quirking a brow.

After a long, uncertain moment, Gram went back to her food, sneaking curious glances here and there but not saying a word.

Taylor resisted the urge to smile.

They ate the rest of the meal in silence, and it felt good to think it might be a comfortable silence. Like they could just stay like this a while, like they’d never done it any other way.

☼

Taylor woke to the creeping light of dawn and yawned a long, lazy yawn. Having her bed set below the window was a boon in that regard, kept her on a regular schedule. She stretched out, sat up, and had just swung her legs off the side when she felt something moving beneath the porch.

Pulling her bigger bugs further into the recesses below the house, she send her least invasive crawlers to check it out. It turned out to be two somethings, both squat, with narrow tails and long faces, sniffing around the underside of the porch.

Her first instinct was to shoo them away somehow, but the way they moved made her hesitate. Neither of them made to chase down her bugs and eat them, and they plodded around with less vigor than she’d expect of a hungry mammal. If they were nocturnal, she realized, they were probably tired, just looking for somewhere to lay their heads.

As she made her bed and dressed for the day, her spiders began to weave a silken barrier to section off the porch for the possums. As she settled into her chair in the kitchen and ate breakfast, beetles and ants carried leaves away to clear a space on the grass. When she went out for a walk, she took the back door so as not to cause a ruckus.

By the time she was out of range, the possums were already curled up in their new den, side by side, drifting off to sleep together.  



End file.
